{"id":78261,"date":"2014-07-26T08:11:23","date_gmt":"2014-07-26T12:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=78261"},"modified":"2014-07-27T02:27:37","modified_gmt":"2014-07-27T06:27:37","slug":"regarding-the-ring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/regarding-the-ring\/","title":{"rendered":"Regarding The Ring"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\u2018It\u2019s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered, full of darkness and danger they were. Sometimes you didn\u2019t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when there\u2019s so much bad that had happened? But in the end it\u2019s only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013 Samwise Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings<\/p>\n

\"PoliticalLike many of you, I’ve been looking out on the world with a sense of awe at its growing instability and deterioration. I was slightly comforted by\u00a0Fareed Zakaria’s message<\/a>\u00a0to Jon Stewart last night that “things have been worse,” but not a lot. Real-time mayhem has a potent kick, and as Eric so succinctly pointed out\u00a0on Friday, we don’t seem to be making much progress, cycling and re-cycling the same old stuff, the basic foibles of humankind. Me, I’m mouth breathing over how much intellect we seem to have lost in the last fifteen years, how much fire in the belly for justice and civil rights we’ve surrendered in the last fifty or so.<\/p>\n

I ran across a little news story this week that seemed to me the epitome of our national disconnect with reality. A Tennessee man walking in a Walmart parking lot with his young son was passed by a car going way too fast. Startled, he yelled for the driver to slow down, prompting her to stop, get out of the car and come at him with a loaded gun, threatening to kill him. He told her he was going to call the cops and she told him to go ahead, she had a gun permit.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And here’s another little mirror of our dysfunction: a Minnesota teenager went outside to tie up her barking dog and was\u00a0shot three times<\/a>, sniper-style. Witnesses recognized the shooter as her neighbor, one the girl had previously asked to stop riding his lawnmower through her yard. Want the cherry on the cake? Charged with attempted first-degree murder, the guy “had been employed at the Northwestern Minnesota Juvenile Center as a corrections worker until\u00a0June 9\u00a0of this year.”<\/p>\n

There are dozens more, but these will do: the kind of stories we’re beginning to hear too often, the kind that would have been met with a cry of alarm from reasonable citizens a decade ago. But, now, just little stories from a vast collection of similar tales. This is the kind of behavior that makes us wonder WTF happened to good sense and sanity, and if we’re ever going to be able to rescue ourselves. Clearly, we have a problem.<\/p>\n

The woman in Tennessee, called a “good gal” by her friends and neighbors, seems to think that because she owns a firearm and has a permit to carry it, she can not only bend the laws to fit her mood but can use her ‘little friend’ to settle whatever argument comes her way. Perhaps that’s what the NRA whispered into her ear, but the cops didn’t agree; she was detained and her gun confiscated. The guy in Minnesota can only be described as several bricks short of a load, and dangerously so, but until a month ago, he was in charge of children in the most challenging of sociological circumstances. Didn’t this pose something of an ethical question for his neighbors, who were aware that he regularly trespassed on other people’s property while armed (and belligerent)? Does that sound like someone you’d let loose on your own child, let alone a group of troubled kids?<\/p>\n

If this hiatus in serious thinking and responsible behavior is typical of the nation — and it seems to be — it would seem, at first glance, that the inmates are running the asylum. At second glance, as well, although some places are worse than others. For all its quickly ‘bluing’ demographic, Texas remains the end-all be-all for serious wing-nuttery, reports of which can literally take one’s breath away. Perhaps all this is just temporary, part and parcel of our extraordinary birthing of a new era. Perhaps it’s just Pluto tickling the fancy of a state with both Sun and Moon in Capricorn, transforming it by pushing its exoskeleton past its ability to encompass so much bullshit, although the old joke from my childhood about the Texan too big to bury — who got an enema and was interred in a shoe box — speaks to a long-standing, deeply ingrained tradition of blowhardism.<\/p>\n

With a nod to those Texans of whom I’m fond, this state routinely provides us egregious examples of right wing antics, like the\u00a0‘open-carry’ rally<\/a>\u00a0at Dealey Plaza (yes, on that very grassy knoll) in Dallas, or the Newsweek article about the ranchers who have made\u00a0immigrant hunting a sport<\/a>, or the complete dearth of rational thought displayed at a recent\u00a0anti-immigration rally<\/a>\u00a0filmed by Free Press Houston, in which we learn that our president has killed four (count ’em!) of his previous gay lovers. Clearly, if you can’t read U.S. news on a daily basis, keeping an eye on Texas will give you a heads-up on the most pressing matters polluted with the dark fumes of paranoia and irrationality.<\/p>\n

The gent who posted that last piece, Tom Boggioni from Pacific Beach, California, describes himself thus: “Mostly he spends his days at the beach gazing at the horizon waiting for the end of the world, or the sun to go down. Whichever comes first.” Frankly, I can understand his hesitancy to get all worked up over either. And, although my heart is dogged in turning up the soft underbelly of our inhumanity to one another so we can see it, carving away at the limiting dross that hides our Light beneath a bushel, I am not immune to the weariness Boggioni describes. I bet you aren’t, either.<\/p>\n

It would be one thing if we were aware that the public had gone barking mad while confident that the reality-based among us had a handle on it and that remediation is at hand, but we aren’t. It’s clear that any actual bulwark against The Crazy\u2122 has been missing for quite some time. The elimination of actual fact as ombudsman for reality began to power up when Bill and Hil took the White House, just about the same time the Moral Majority succeeded in politicizing their simplistic, dumbed-down definition of morality. Rewriting reality became an art form in the Bush administration, in tandem with rewritten history among the home-schooled. Now fact and science are opinion, and all things are politically biased. Or, as Herbert Agar put it, “The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.”<\/p>\n

There are a growing number of truth-tellers out there, pecking away at our hardened arteries of nationalism and black\/white patriot dreams, and they’re beginning to get a share of readers who are looking to step into the thin neutral zone between the hard-line of obstruction and the seeming wimpiness of the obstructed. Jim Wallis of (Christian left)\u00a0Sojourners<\/em>\u00a0magazine, in his\u00a0Huffington Post article<\/a> “Let’s Tell the Truth About This International Madness,” writes, “The horrible human costs and increasing danger the world is now facing in Gaza, Ukraine, and Iraq show the consequences of not telling the truth.”<\/p>\n

Wallis continues:<\/p>\n

“Instead of dealing with the complicated and conflicted causes of a crisis — instead of honestly assessing U.S. influences, liabilities, and responsibilities in trying to help resolve these conflicts — politicians quickly descend into the blame game. And any self-reflection about how their bombings and occupations have led to more crises, how their unbalanced support for the participants in the conflicts have prevented solutions, or how their self-righteous rhetoric fuels conflicts instead of resolving them — is completely absent.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kudos to Wallis for pointing out how this nation hides behind its mythology, historical inaccuracies and posturing. And while I’m at it, kudos to the Pope for calling out the criminals and the heartless and the greedy. Because of the American religious factor, it’s vital for the mainstream church to put forth a message of renewed morality — and by that I mean the whispering of our higher angels, not the dark mumbling of our puritanical devils — especially now that the religious right has gone all wackadoodle, making the left look saner by the minute. But still, it’s not like we don’t already know all this. We do. We ALL know things are not well with the nation, with the planet, and while some of us busy ourselves beating someone else up for the problems we face,\u00a0others of us are near to desperate for solutions. Can anyone tell me why we can’t\u00a0seem to rouse ourselves to do anything about it?<\/p>\n

No, things aren’t as bad as they are in Palestine, where those caught in that hellish fishbowl have finally begun to protest. Sure, the majority of us still have enough to eat, even though a full FIFTH of us are food insecure, with those numbers growing by the day. We may fancy that we still have too much to lose to rock the boat, but rouse ourselves we must, because if we allow ourselves to be carried by the tide, tossed between the polls that separate the needy from the greedy, never taking a stand, never living from our ethical center, our eventual battering will not just wound us ourselves, but all those whom we care about. We will have failed the true test of spiritual resolve that asks us to do no harm, by failing to prevent it when we met it.<\/p>\n

Like Frodo, we all carry the ring. It may not be THE ring (I think Dick Cheney had it not long ago, lent him by one of the Koch brothers), but each of us is surely asked to wrestle with our internal dynamic of self interest vs. selflessness\u00a0in order to overcome the world we have created around us. And while it is not enough to do the inner work without finding an activist’s role in the outer, we often attempt to look out on a faltering world without owning our part of its woes. As Eckhart Tolle tells us, “The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution: millions of unconscious individuals not taking responsibility for their inner space.”<\/p>\n

There was one last little news story that got my attention this week. It seems to me an apt explanation for where we are and what we’re doing — at least for the moment. A green-leaning couple in Glendora, California went to the mailbox and pulled out a letter from the city threatening them with a $500 fine for allowing their\u00a0lawn to brown<\/a>. Neighbors had evidently turned them in. It arrived on the same day that the state approved mandatory watering restrictions, threatening $500 fines for those who ignore the new plan to limit water use. And now this responsible pair, who had pro-actively adjusted their water use, will be required to pony up a wad of cash to satisfy a system that has yet to adjust to the realities of this century. That’s where we find ourselves today, with a foot in both world views. We have not gotten where we’re going, completed our experience of the 2012 energies, the cross-point that has brought us to a painful awareness of the growing injustices we’ve ignored too long; we’ve not taken note of what is unsustainable and toxic.<\/p>\n

We have yet to get a clear picture of what’s imperative: in this instance, choice between a green lawn or the water table. In the case of Detroit, even the\u00a0basic right to water<\/a>\u00a0is in question. Laws have become muddled, turned inside out. For instance, we can’t deny working women a decent wage, make no attempt to provide child care\u00a0and still put them in jail for their children going unattended in cars and parks. We can’t continue to suck off the bones of public money to fill the purse of private commerce. What is unsustainable for those of us without means has yet to pop up on the well-to-do’s radar. It’s up to us to make sure it does, convincing them that it is in the public — and therefore, private — interest to restore a healhy middle class and lift others out of poverty.\u00a0Real compassion cannot leave these problems unaddressed.<\/p>\n

From the long view, the ongoing Uranus\/Pluto aspect that continues to push transformation forward looked different in the mid-60s. There’s revolution for change, and then there’s whatever this is: a kind of revolving door of paranoid fantasy involving taxation and sexuality and ownership issues from centuries past. The left may have been whipped into a frenzy back in the day, the protests\u00a0polarizing and\u00a0sometimes out of control, those on the hard-left stumbling into occasional criminal activities, but I don’t remember any lack of factual evidence on which we based our concerns. The war was bogus; history has spoken. The CIA was complicit; the records remain. The schism in culture was no more difficult then than now, but there was no evangelical movement to twist and turn the situation for political outcome.<\/p>\n

Put plainly, I don’t remember that we made shit up or were deluded by fears. In fact, we were pretty fearless. As we consider the full expression of the Grand Cross activities, we’re experiencing another aspect of that revolutionary energy, not as innocent as it was back in the day. It’s a much darker expression and it calls for a response — even leadership — from those of us who recognize how important is this moment and how hesitant we seem to be to engage in shaping it. Looking over the landscape of these last years, I find myself echoing Fishin’ Jim’s favorite line: “They can’t take our freedom from us, but we can surely give it away.” And that’s exactly what we’ve done, again and again, with not much more than a murmur.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we’ll find our voice now that Jupiter has taken up residence in Leo. These are courageous energies, not the kind that go quietly into the night. I hope they speak to you, find purchase in your intellect, find residence in your heart. You — we all — deserve better than we’re providing ourselves, but it will take a village of us to put those concerns on the table.<\/p>\n

If you find yourself suddenly moved to stand up and be counted, there are grassroots groups that would welcome you, so many activities begging for your help that you can’t help but feel bolstered and appreciated by people of like mind. Visit PopularResistance.org to see what’s going on in your world. Check with local artisans and agro-groups, progressive churches and not-for-profits to see what you can do to help out. I will guarantee you that whatever you do that helps another — that supports the whole, that encourages harmlessness — will enlarge your experience and bless your circumstances.<\/p>\n

This is hardly the worst time in history, but it is surely a moment of decision in terms of what the future will provide us, a turning point that each of us must take responsibility for. If we’re attempting communion with our spiritual self, willing to walk the talk and do the work, then we must understand that everything we see around us has suddenly become “our business.”\u00a0 Unconditional love leaves the well-being of no one out, does it?<\/p>\n

Our ability to follow in that hero’s journey is a decision each of us must make anew each day, spurred on by all we see around us. Some of us, I suspect, will prefer to sit this one out, but to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, a man of great heart and ethical integrity, “God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please \u2014 you can never have both.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves \u2018It\u2019s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered, full of darkness and danger they were. Sometimes you didn\u2019t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when there\u2019s so … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"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\/78261"}],"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\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}