Strange

"Webs of events that grew together to become a net in life. Life was a thing that grew wild. She supposed there was an overall pattern, a design to it.

She'd never found one.

She thought of the tools she had gathered together, and painstakingly learned to use. Futureprobes, Tarot and I Ching and the wise wispfingers from the stars ... all these to scry and ferret and vex the smokethink future. A broad general knowledge, encompassing bits of history, psychology, ethology, religious theory and practices of many kinds. Her charts of self-knowledge. Her library. The inner thirst for information about everything that had lived or lives on Earth that she'd kept alive long after childhood had ended.

None of them helped make sense of living.

She watched the sealight grow."

Keri Hulme, The Bone People, p.111

Authentic Power

"It's hard to know what authentic power is; we've had so few examples of it. For so long power has been a matter of control and dominion, the thing that keeps people up and others down, the blood that feeds the hierarchy.

The kind of power women need is not ruthless, controlling, self-serving, dominion-seeking power - power without benefit of love. It is not staying up by keeping others down. What we need is a potent, forceful power, yes, but one that is also compassionate, that enables others as well.

'The true representation of power is not a big man beating a small man or woman,' Carolyn Heilbrun writes. Nor is it a woman beating up on a man or finding a place in the hierarchy and mimicking the old patriarchal ways on entitlement, control, and command. Rather, Heilbrun says, power is 'the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one's part matter'."

Sue Monk Kidd (2002) The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Harper, San Francisco, p.199

Maya Angelou tells it like it is ...

No matter what has been done to the oppressed, no matter how long we have been on our knees, no matter the injustice, no matter, for in the end we will find away and we will rise. BE ASSURED WE ... WILL ... RISE ...

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Travelling

Travelling …

On your journey
You have choices, responsibilities
There right in front of you
Everyday, never going away

Foot-steps you take maybe a mistake
Or maybe they’re where you’re meant to be
Right here, right now
Sit for awhile, take in the view and smile

Moving on the search or discovery
Night and day, summer or spring
Chances pass by to be taken, or not
Hear the song

Jump into the future, grab change
Accentuate the infinite possible thought
All the way until its gone, gone, gone
Travelling …

Abbot Dr. Burkhard Ellegast, OSB

"We tend to want to capture things because we usually see freedom as something that has no borders or responsibilities. And because of this we also end up trying to enslave all that we love – as if egoism were the only way to keep our world well balanced. Love does not limit, it broadens our horizons, we can see clearly what lies outside and we can see even more clearly the dark places in our heart."

I am the Song of Amergin

I am the wind which breaths upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rock,
i am a beam of the sun,
I am the fairest of plants,
I am a wild boar in valour,
I am a salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a word of science,
I am the point of the lance in battle,
I am the God who creates in the head the fire.
Who is it who throws the light into the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the moon?
Who teaches the place where crouches the sun?

Bring on the revolution ...

... it's all about the love.

"Paulo Freire says, 'I am more and more convinced that true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love'. He goes onto quote the enigmatic Che Guevara, who wrote in Venceremos: 'Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality'. Freire then states a truth that is the utmost importance and, for the campaigning activist, the greatest challenge. He says:

This then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.

'All life entails violence', says Gandhi. We cannot walk across a field of grass without causing hurt to the creatures that live there. However, he concludes, our duty is to minimise the violence we personally exert. And to forgive and ask forgiveness: for as William Blake says, 'The cut worm forgives the plough.' Mutual continual forgiveness liberates the ongoing expression of life.

Hearing truth spoken inevitably troubles the chrome-plated peace of the oppressor. Stirring things up like this, however, is a duty, even an act of love. If done right, which is so hard to acheive as to be rare, it will speak to the oppressor's own deep self as well as on behalf of those who they oppress. A social activist cannot expect to be loved by the ego of the oppressor. But if they fail to speak to and remember the soul, then that activist will fail in the greater work that liberation is about."

Alistair McIntosh, Soil and Soul, Autum Press, 2002, p.277

What matters?

In the 'Secret Life of Bees' Sue Monk Kidd writes, "You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the colour of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart - now, that matters. The whole problem with people is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."

"You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside."

"When you're unsure of yourself, when you start pulling back into doubt and small living, she's the one inside saying, 'Get up from there and live like the glorious girl you are.' She's the power inside of you. And whatever it is that keeps widening your heart, that's her too, not only the power inside you but the love. And when you get down to it, Lily, that's the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love - but to persist in love."

Winnie-the-Pooh I Love You

Us Two

Wherever I am, there's always Pooh,

There's always Pooh and Me.

Whatever I do, he wants to do,

"Where are you going today?" says Pooh:

"Well that's very odd 'cos I was too.

"Let's go together," says Pooh, says he.

"Let's go together," says Pooh.

'What's twice eleven?' I said to Pooh,

('Twice what?' said Pooh to Me)'

I think it ought to be twenty-two.

''Just what I think my self,' said Pooh.

'It wasn't an easy sum to do,

But that's what it is,' said Pooh, said he.

'That's what it is,' said Pooh.

'Let's look for dragons,' I said to Pooh.

'Yes, let's,' said Pooh to Me.

We crossed the river and found a few--

'Yes, these are dragons all right,' said Pooh.

'As soon as I saw their beaks I knew.

That's what they are,' said Pooh, said he.

'That's what they are,' said Pooh.

So wherever I am, there's always Pooh,

There's always Pooh and Me.

'What would I do?' I said to Pooh,

'If it wasn't for you,' and Pooh said:

'True,it isn't much fun for One, but Two

Can stick together,' says Pooh, says he.

'That's how it is,' says Pooh.

- A A Milne -

Trees Need Hugs Too!

The Wishing Tree
by Kathleen Jamie

I stand neither in the wilderness
nor fairyland

but in the fold
of a green hill

the tilt from one parrish
into another.

To look at me
through a smirr of rain

is to taste the iron
in your own blood

because I hoard
the common currency

of longing: each wish
each secret assignation.

My limbs lift, scabbed
with greenish coins

I draw into my slow wood
fleur-de-lys, the enthroned Britannia.

Behind me, the land
reaches towards the Atlantic.

And though I'm poisoned
choking on the small change

of human hope,
daily beaten into me

look: I'm still alive -
in fact, in bud.

Trust In The Process

Brian Keenan met a women whilst travelling in Alaska, "she spoke of worlds that are hidden from the eye. Such worlds are often difficult to reveal, and many a life is lived in the shadows from a lack of such validation, but when we live close to our intutitions and emotions we can if we wish find companions in the strangest places" (Four Quarters of Light, p.112).

Ask yourself this ...

Where has all the wisdom gone?

Huston Smith said 'we have never been so informed and never more confused about what is important'. In the modern world we have technology, such as the Internet, which maybe an excellent tool, a vehicle for transporting data, information and ideas, but it is nothing without content and even less without a filter or screen to devine the knowledge and wisdom that will point us to what is important. The more content, the more information we have the more we become overloaded, lost, ignorant and confused.

You can go all the way back to 1934 and the words of T S Eliot in the poem 'The Rock' to hear more or less the same message;

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

Risky Business

... you wanna know something?

Every now and then say,"What the fuck."

"What the fuck" gives you freedom.

Freedom brings opportunity.

Opportunity makes your future.