speak, with different voices and languages, essentially the same concerns for our common welfare

091223 07:24
Our lives are their own justification and reconciliation to reality. We either have, or have not, peace.
Implied/explicit, within my consciousness, is an inconvenient ‘devil’s advocate’ who puts my ‘feet to the fire.’ When alone, as I am in most of the ordinary days of my life, I enter an abstract place expressed in what I write.
At first I thought in terms of ‘keeping a personal journal.’ An idea that was suggested to me by a clergy person. Who, it now seems, was well aware of my distress, if not actual disease;
read dis-ease, no ease or peace possible.
That person implied I could find sanity through the activity and brought to my attention a person who had done so; moving from clinical insanity to balanced sanity.
Attention of any kind is welcomed by most of us. Yet attention of those in authority can be loosely defined/experienced in one of three ways: benign, indifferent, malevolent. The weal or woe of life, and in my life specifically, has been a study in what I perceived as no-treat, all treat or balanced between the two extremes.
My habitual perception, and experience, was formerly dominated by all-treat, and no peace, anywhere. Chaos.
I knew nothing else and became addicted to my posture and attempt to control that which implied worthlessness in my self: unlovable, not worthy of kindness and so on. The consequence of my choice was merely that at all opportunities to learn, see, taste experience myself as other than helpless were to be avoided at all costs. Denial became my theme song. Simply sung in the idle moments--a white/back--noise.
Why do I mention this given the nearness, of our celebration; The Prince of Peace?
Sixty-Eight and one half years in hell is long enough.
The peace I know now is beyond telling or measuring in terms of wealth and staggeringly beautiful in the following sense. Yet I do, did and will continue to work at understanding the nature, meaning and value of all life.
I am no longer the victim of, nor afraid, of anything: authority or death.
I understand fundamentalism very well since my foundation had been helplessness; no vote, no voice . . . it was as though I had no “Right” to live or be myself.
Yesterday I wrote a harsh dispute of the abuse of separation of powers between State and Church [and be read: Religion.}
Within our culture or “civilization” as experienced in The United States of America, there is a mood of fear and persecution; punishment for dissent and protest.
Most of us cling to the status quo regardless of how it works, or fails our needs to have life in peace assured by those in power. No one is without dysfunction. No one is perfect. We are what we are: imperfect persons attempting to cope with the realities of life; which has a beginning middle and end called death.
I want nothing, having everything I need, and am willing to follow the lead of people I trust. They have earned that trust through the fiery furnace of my attention to what they are about.  More specifically what do they want of me and what does that imply in flesh-and-blood terms and consequences?
I need not confess farther my attention to God through Jesus. Yet I remain equally aware of the Prophet Mohammad and those many of Judaism. Add to that the Prophets of other times and cultures before, during and now who spoke, or speak, with different voices and languages, essentially the same concerns for our common welfare. I have a vision/version of God as the Chief Executive Officer and the Prophets, all of them, Board Members conjoined in an effort to make love, life, living possible for all people. No exceptions allowed.
In such time as I am allowed I will advocate, as I believe the prophets in their own time, one-by-one changed people from status quo to responsibility and choice for that which allows the children to follow--though there be now too many to sustain--live, liberty, peace and love.
Dominant amongst my concerns and intentions is the simple inequality of women as slaves to men’s agendas. I intuit, sense, think and feel this expropriates their obvious equality intellectually, spiritually and their right to equality. To force women to have no voice in reproductive issues is, I believe, unbridled aggression upon their souls. Our souls have no gender, think Angels.
. . . and when I ask the Lord’s blessing, I may say “Our Father” but my heart silently says “Our Parent.”
The influence of all the Prophets of God began with their own change and transformation. In retrospect we accept them emphatically as definitions of “God.” And too often worship the messenger instead of the author of the messages. In my dedication, conviction and intention is this simple kernel/core: God is both, perfectly combined, female/male. In anticipation of outrage and accusations of heresy or simply calling me the Anti-Christ or merely the Devil, I will add this final remark.
If you define love by gender sexuality it limits the potential of a brother willing to die for his brother regardless of race or creed. Jesus spoke to this issue but went only so far. It is a noble thing to sacrifice one’s life for another--on the battle field or in that final moment before mutual, or inevitable single, death. Yet, should they kiss one another goodbye we protest their sexual orientation and some would feel a desire to hasten their departure.
In my own life I have known the pleasure of many women, some sexually, but in greater measure through friendship. I do confess an exaggerated joy in sexual pleasure but nothing compares to the bliss of friendship with another regardless their gender identification.
The more I think about God the more I experience God in all life. And to the experience I am compelled to surrender my self. No matter how I parse the symbols of God the closer I come to explicit trust; and I know peace for the first time in my life.
May the peace and understanding of God’s joy be manifest in all your life . . . in the every moment be the self created to be you. . . . and the Christ Mass be your everyday. He was eventually sacrificed to end all fear, perhaps only my greatest sin and waste of all the years preceeding this moment, the eternal Now.