120525 03:53
"God willing, and the creek don't rise . . . "

    I will endeavor to no longer share the threads and leading's which form my current education; the where, wherefore and why of yours is my concern. And it is my sincere conviction that the function of Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha and the legions of others whose divinity will forever remain unknown to me are/were in essence teachers.
    The primary function of teaching is leadership in the following sense: it seeks to replace itself, fully conscious the inevitability of death--not merely the death of our body but institutions, cultures and civilizations. . . . Even this planet, our home. In the process of teaching it is astonishing that the teacher is taught and the student becomes uniquely more than what was taught. A gift that keeps on giving and bearing the only interest worthy of life's attention.
    Instead of rail against the obvious failure of oligarchy--or any other form of tyranny. Or as I sense it, institutionalized folly lead by ambition and greed become oppressive. Obviously not salvific in or by any means, measure or kind. Were we to be fully educated we might better serve our selves and others that they too live fully and free. Otherwise we become like those who send children laden with bombs to destroy themselves and one or more others in THE NAME OF THE CAUSE. Or as they would have it: "In the Name of God!"
    Win/Win.
    Not I win you lose.
    Since in the process--apparent--is the destruction of our home; communal: not communist or socialist but collaborative and/or co-creation; a world inhabitable for all life not just a few who hoard everything. Ambition and competition become addiction, nothing is ever enough; no more noble than crack cocaine; or a lunatic excuse for more.
    Selfishness.
    What is power?
    How do we define absolute good?
    Follow the money honey it will show who wins and loses.
    I know my death is near and dear since it will provide the next experience. Though I will, like all others, have no idea what lays beyond. The "God willing" is simply my prayer that I serve as servant to others that they too my have my wealth and more; all that they can carry or use.
    The "Rising Creek" part is my experience--first hand--of those whose lives end in dementia then Alzheimer's disease or any of a number of other forms of death by slow disintegration . . . "Death is not the worst that can happen to men.” --Plato
    When we fear anything it owns us. It is oxymoronic that those who rule use fear to control us collectively and individually. Of course I 'fear' God but only in the sense of absolute respect and would be neither God's or any man's pet. . . . But then as with any adversary it should be an agreement to disagree, not I'll kill you to prove my superiority: to you, your family, your anything or everything. Or the what, who, why, where and when of Good.
    I understand that "God" is not exclusively Christian, nor is Jesus "Christian." That said I will close with John 8:32 "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." Or as Gandhi said "There is no God higher than Truth."

120524 04:23
    Ideal & real are separated by light years of difference. To think otherwise is wishful, or magical, thinking. I know this best since it was formerly my position to be fixed and immutable, but then not even God, or what we consider the absolute highest power, is such.
    To have and to hold, to lay up or lose, are issues inevitably decided by the value and meaning of life it self. And for me the issue is decided towards the truth of free will and choice, won at the cost of many lives sacrificed to keep this possible in real time.
    As we close on Memorial Day, in America, the day is experienced differently by those who seek a holiday from the normal grind of keeping alive by labor. For me today is extraordinary, the birthday of two very special people no longer with us. My son and a man who was a surrogate father to me. Their lives and deaths have altered mine by intersection or coincidence? I don’t think so.
    Nor do I think it an inconvenient truth that we live, essentially free, because of the efforts of those who remain or are departed in efforts to nurture our right and privilege to vote or not. My thinking and feelings have been fundamentally and irrevocably altered by recent events. Cause and effect, birth implies death, both should be celebrated equally yet death in and of itself is avoided at all costs in the ordinary of our time.
    I received notification that I was in jeopardy of being evicted from my HUD augmented rental apartment for issues of cleanliness. Despite my maturity, wisdom and experience I went through the “why me--why not me--this is a pain in the sit down” and then dealt with the issue; procrastination is the theft of time. The result is a forced integration between my ideal and real life manifest in spades.
    I have an articulated sense of the ideal person, Jesus, as being perfectly balanced between male and female, equal in definition: thinking, feeling, sensing and intuition. Thus He is not some vague object or subject of idle speculation to me. Though I fall flat on my face attempting to emulate His ideal I always get back up and continue the struggle and will continue to do so until I can no longer get up in death.
    My point is that within the chaos of current reality we must work towards tolerance, understanding and the possibility of Love not Vengeance. Since we are all equal in the eyes of What Jesus spoke about, but not exclusively of His definition or time 2,000 years ago--as citizens of the world we must seek what give life equally to all of us.

"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

. . . an afterthought or two: Political debate has devolved into argument thus become a lunatic asylum for idealistic rhetoric while our children are now sacrificed for the profit of both the politicians and those who fund their campaigning that they remain in profitable power together. Seek Truth Always be sure of your resources:

http://www.brainpickings.org/    today: . . . excerpt from BBC’s 1959 Face to Face interview
"I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral.

The intellectual thing I should want to say is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say.

The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple: I should say, love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet."
--Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

120516 07:46
a brief soft shoe shuffle for Emily Dickinson in 12/10 time . . .
nothing I say may I consider worthy lasting beyond the utterance
within the context of this life of little consequence as living an
eternity daily mindful the time before time became remembered
seeking the time after time forgotten from which words are minted
spoken through me not mine alone but the property of The Author

120517 05:52
International Chartreuse Distress wearing Life Vest a polar bear in The Salton Sea should I become rather than leave impossibly the company of God

And in the wandering and wondering leaving behind beloved's one after another through their death or mine to them through attrition triage or parse the final definition is key to who judges whom as worthy or not intimacy

In childhood as an inconvenient convenience to all and sundry loving them as a child or pet I came to sense myself in a Fun House Horror Mirror Maze Carnival of becoming what was said and expected of me faithfully Rubber Child disposable

Defining meaning of life changes moment by moment escaped the pressure cooker of dependence once begun the journey is its own goal since death’s democracy has no fear within it and the hammer blows of suffering forge the sword and plow shear of self become

What?

Whole participant in the collective consciousness that the old ways are too old the definitions worn thread bare institutional lies enslaving me no more becoming a we an us responsible

Suffering experiencing deeds become loves salvation through love in love with All Of Us

120518 01:44 family departures
A skip and drag routine intervenes between my times at La Posada and otherwise not there; referred to generally as just hospice.

"Death is not the worst that can happen to men.” --Plato

Of death there are degrees. Some live a life uninhabited and unknown, oblivious to beginnings and endings. Others fret and sweat the small stuff attempting to control what is beyond the ken of man. And of those in the glide path going Home I watch since it is my job to make sure they are not in other forms of jeopardy imperiled.

And in them I see, sometimes peace, other times distress, and then sometimes decline then the end.

In no particular order: on one hand birth the other death each in a natural order. Life long or short, really is a question of quality versus quantity. The nurse whose father was there last time was not there this time. And in the telling I was told by the one telling  her father lost suddenly that day or the day before at forty. If you know the how and why of death life becomes precious beyond price.

By commission I was taught to inhabit and incarnate whatever I could know of Jesus who, to me at least, first vanquished death. Then I discovered Buddha who at the end said he longed never to return . . . and do it all over again. But that was five hundred years before AC/DC. . . . will any or all of us ever learn to walk away from our fear?

So in these closing days of my life I admire the people I’ve come to know as family those present and those absent. There is one volunteer aged eighty nine I am especially fond of. After a long absence he returned from convalescence--bladder cancer/a long dance. He was speaking to a friend who like me is close as we three are well aware. An aside, least I lead you astray: there are those very young adolescent who are part of our family who in losing their friends, pets, parents, et al, have realized a need to give comfort and succor too. Ideals impossible in an ‘ordinary’ hospital given all the political manipulations.

I called across the foyer to them both. “Curb your mouth she’s a friend.” He laughed, she giggled all three knowing his penchant and proclivity of being a curmudgeon. The “Catch 22” he was a bomber crew member flying Liberators in World War II. He, not alone, it is a privilege to be intimate with.

120518 02:41
Road Side Crosses & other markings passage
Odd this practice of remarking the place and time
Something like the crumpled wrapping paper and
ribbons littering the end of Christmas kids playing with
the boxes not the gifts

The baby pigeons beaks raised in expectation
eyes closed in sudden death first seen at four

The others friends, school mates, mothers
fathers young and old in repose open casket

Tree divided a man electrocuted by lightning
The friend crushed beneath a car on lookers gawked
blocking first responders a curiosity his eyes flashed to me
who he had introduced to the first sex worker who when I wanted
to talk said “Let’s Mount UP!” Oh well such is life glorious no shame or blame

120518 03:38
Intrigued by concepts pondered endlessly is the sense in which a child lives out the unlived life of their parent. Or. In my case the unlived lives of those of mine who lived and passed before me,  the aborted brother/sister or other child or children also.

I am at times furious with my father or Father of All of us and would contend with either or both together that i finally know myself loved or wanted at all.

Recall a moment in bliss floating upon an inter tube oblivious that I was at vast distance upon Long Island Sound from safety. And he my Dad swam to me in peril of his own life drawing me back to safety in his black knit penis revealing swim suit. . . . Oh god, he was hung like a horse. And other times alone together when he sacrificed his time to mine. In the minority yet never complete recompense the times he stood silent by while mom beat me nearly to death. Wounds, contusions, broken bones, naked standing in winter locked out can and do heal but those slanders defamations and denigrations never really go away though forgiven for/from either of them.

Why me? I’ll never know fully save that in intimacy I’ve been told too many similar stories to remain silent forever oblivious the pain of others made Banzai Trees contorted.

Runes, ruins, myths, omens, portents signs upon walls and dreams crushed pennies saved from city pavements spied speckled like the stars above in night adored. I seek clues about their legacy to me as a bequest from their parents reaching back into prehistory. A place wherein the unknowing name given was passed on and on to me to finally lay at rest this heritage of suffering.

She said we are no more important than a grain of sand--thus found Blake.
He said read Kafka and I better know both he, myself and all others who purport to serve . . . and now weep for their gifts to me both the parents and The Parent(s) of us all. Rapture or rupture I’m ready to end this ecstasy of playing with words.

. . . there is no end to/of love everything is a portal to something else and death no end rites of passage journey on infinity

. . . perhaps not so odd the though he wanted me sans clothes when together in the end our travels together mom however loathed being a woman and would flame me when I ogled her--less the last time before the white gild handled refrigerator coffin buried

“Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.”--Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC)

“This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.”
--Buddha

120518 07:21
in the best of times i say ‘nothing is for naught’
in the worst of times I ask “WHY ME?”
& maybe at the 10,000th incident i receive answers worthy of record maybe not

120519 00:46
Let us now praise famous men/women, and our parents who begot us . . .
    In a sincere, appreciation and fulsome gratitude do I acknowledge the many who I would praise yet remain slave nor slavish to none not even God.
    But some I would praise more highly than others simply for their spirit of inquiry and curiosity pushing the boundaries of the human psyche beyond the limitless reaches of both God and all Creation.
    At the inception/inspiration of this post I had in mind Maria Popova for her manifold gifts apparent in Brainpickings. And other women who, of needs, will remain nameless for now. In this, my childlike, construct and perception: men seem most fixated upon goals achievable  while women see potential undefined and nurturing prize that. Upon the endless dust of creation neither leave traces save upon the sentient. Creation is not a product but a process self-rewarding; an act of love beyond price or praise.
    At full flood there is within these moments a choir of thoughts possible. Yet sticking to my compendium of encounters, clues and stumblings in the past 24 hours I will say this.
    A Blog is by its nature not definitive but born from journal keeping; the most intimate act possible in humans, solitary, recorded. For me without aggrandizement, pretence or illusion I write to heal others who like me suffer obscenely--in my case, make that past tense--and so it is apparent prayer.
    I am willing to be one pebble piled like The Tower of Babble to reach truths I know extant. And if I seem fractious or fatuous it seems a small price to pay so long as those few who read these words are engaged in the eyes of their heart and the hearing of their feet as they journey as well all do in life or death.
    As for myself, this aging white boy from Greenwich Connecticut and the halcyon Ohio River Valley born and breed, I don’t care to live another moment. The motive to publish has nothing to do with either immortality or any quantitative measure or treasure.
    Think of yourself growing and gestating into a new life undefinable yet worth every tear God might bestow the labor in delivery which for me is mere play. And for God’s Love I would be anything, mendicant fool or otherwise.
    I undergo constant redefinition both of intention and by experience. It is not a singular event like Jesus upon the Cross. Nor is it the sacrifice, of protest a Buddhist self immolating, that I would have you memorialize but these things in your own life and consciousness.
    What follows, from this day forward, will be an annotation of a life and work lived. Apparently fractious but a seamless continuity to me; a reprise of childhood sans the hammer blows forging a self/soul. Love is acceptance of everything including our selves unlovable. From this basis do I ask you to love yourselves and ask, for in asking you will receive from the Author of Creation.
    In closing, for now, one or two caveats: Be Here Now & Do No Harm . . . it is not you or me but we who must find the answers least we be no more.




   

120516 03:03
    Can I speak of grief? Of course I can from my experience. Yet every experience is unique to everyone in that we are all individual. A priest, knowing my history, asked once what he should, or might, say to a father who had, in backing up a truck, crushed his five year old son to death. In reply, “Just listen. He will tell you what he needs but give no chapter and verse.”
    Presumptuous, perhaps, in retrospect I sense my intuition correct. Better yet when I hear the phrase attributed to Jesus: “Let the children come unto me.” Given the loss of two and the absence of the other children by estrangement what I heard broke my teeth yet now in hearing enter His embrace as the child he meant.
    Somehow, and oddly, my questions and reply's seem more urgent not simply for service at hospice; the clinic--not the field--an entirely different experience. For there I learned to consider the needs of staff as well as the patients and their families/friends. It is not so much what I say or do but how they feel that concerns me. Sincerely I carry them in my heart and wonder at what I write since my prayer is continuous and inarticulate ... sometimes I fight to withhold my tears. Since not only is it “unmanly” by some standards to cry but I would rather they receive my acceptance of their pain by me unchanged.    
    Empathy, compassion and mercy are qualities unremarkable by outward signs; not something worn but something lived; to be. Of particular note are the family members of staff who pass there. Regardless degree, kind, nature of service all participate in significant ways. It is a family into which one can be adopted as familiar seen in new and alarming definitions as well as strangers embraced. There, more than one would expect, who healed leave on their own two feet.
    I see life, love, god and myself within each and everyone regardless their health. And pray that when I die I will have the courage to remain unchanged until the end not defined by the cause singular. But, perhaps, that too is vain of me to ask. It is in this sense, a prayer for myself, preemptive.
    I see our PTSD returning warriors as much in grief as in extremis emotionally. They sould be offered healing as well as our 'enemy.'
    It is not by science/psychology or religion/spirituality that we can be healed but both since to respond in love is to accept them exactly where they are and need to be in this time and situation.
    While I remain conscious of Jesus’ healing of others and raising the dead. I see now that it is a process involving the patient as well as the source of healing--intimate--in that love wills the will of God for both. It is something on the order of magnitude equal to loving thy enemy. Effective in the long and lasting term, better than drugs or palliatives, and no nasty side-effects or hangovers.
    Love is objectively indefinable. It is Islam’s ideal that God has many names, too numerous to mention, so too with Judaism. I, being a image recorder/creator am acquainted with the fetish nature of symbols which by it’s nature suggests cults.
    Subjectively, God is Love, present, personal, specific to each persons experience and responds to requests. So long as it’s not a new Escalade ... maybe, maybe not ... it wouldn’t do a thing for me. We all die and in the end even Jesus said, “Thy Will Be done.”   
    On an even more personal issue. I used to wonder while I wandered through everything: ‘What is definitive?” And thus everything became too important to attempt and fail. I know better now.
    I know nothing of the art and craft of writing and potentially a bit more about photography. Yet the more I learn about life, the more I know that I know less, than there is to be known. So if I lead you astray forgive, please, my trespass. Have mercy for both of us and let us know Love at last together.
    Be well
    Beloved
    Death has no dominion
    i know that!

PS In childhood a friend once described me as a tank into which rounds were fired yet I kept moving ... the crew inside, although wounded continued on....a recent insight. Happy in my solitude, my nature, I close with the following:

Loneliness, like flu, is "infectious", study finds
Tue Dec 1, 2009 3:06am EST
SINGAPORE, Dec 1 (Reuters Life!) - Loneliness, like the flu, is contagious, U.S. research shows.

It can spread among groups of people and women are more likely than men to become "infected", according to researchers at the University of Chicago, the University of California-San Diego and Harvard.

Using data from a large-scale study, they found lonely people tend to transmit their sad feelings to those around them, which eventually led to them being isolated from society.

"We detected an extraordinary pattern of contagion that leads people to be moved to the edge of the social network when they become lonely," said University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo, a leading U.S. expert on loneliness.

The findings were published in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Before losing their friends, lonely people transmit feelings of loneliness to their remaining friends, who also become lonely.

"On the periphery people have fewer friends, yet their loneliness leads them to losing the few ties they have left," Cacioppo said.

"These reinforcing effects mean that our social fabric can fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater," Cacioppo added.

Because loneliness is associated with mental and physical diseases that can shorten life, Cacioppo said it is important for people to recognize loneliness and help those affected before they move away to the edges.

For the study, the team examined records of the Framingham Heart Study, which originally studied the risks of cardiovascular disease for more than 5,000 people since 1948.

The study has since been expanded, and its second generation, which includes another 5,124 people, was the focus of the loneliness research.

The study showed that as people become lonely, they become less trustful of others, and a cycle develops that makes it harder for them to form friendships.

Societies seem to develop a natural tendency to shed these lonely people, something that is mirrored in tests of monkeys, Cacioppo said, adding that this makes it all the more important to recognize loneliness and deal with it before it spreads.

(Writing by Miral Fahmy; Editing by Paul Tait) ((miral.fahmy@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: miral.fahmy.reuters.com@thomsonreuters.net, +65 6870 3813)) ((If you have a query or comment on this story, send an email to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com))

PPS what makes me do barrel rolls and loops amongst the starry nights soaring or in free fall . . . .

--John Dryden
“Beware the fury of a patient man.”

--John Milton
"So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life."

036. Flower Shower
Subhuti was Buddha's disciple. He was able to understand the potency of emptiness, the viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of subjectivity and objectivity.

One day Subhuti, in a mood of sublime emptiness, was sitting under a tree. Flowers began to fall about him.

"We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness," the gods whispered to him.

"But I have not spoken of emptiness," said Subhuti.

"You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness," responded the gods. "This is true emptiness." And blossoms showered upon Subhuto as rain.

120515 0538
    In any and all events it is shame to lay waste to a mind, body, much less a soul. Yet we hold the measure and means to do both wholesale unto extinction, ourselves and all life known, in the bargain. To aspire health, wealth and wisdom seem impossibilities in this time and place near pointless. In our brief history and culture, a thin and inconsequential veneer to our home, upon the marble we call earth. Within the larger contest of all marbles seen and unseen. Questing for life by our definition “divine?” Our bodies alone are filled with life inimical to our well being held in check by curious defenses at least 90% our responsibility and participation.
    Our sense of peace and equanimity.
    Do I protest the Factory Farming of our psyches or bodies? No. Since it is ideal, at least for me, to Love my Enemy and grant that enemy the right, no matter singular or corporate, to exist as I do. Free, whole and well. Call that Liberal to which I would quietly say, ‘No it is conservative of my sense the Truth spoken, immutable, by He who I call brother. And not He alone but for all the prophets of Freedom to be at all individual.’
    In the final moments of our time together, my father choose to shred my right, in whole or part minuscule, to his estate based upon choices not inimical to me but to him. By choice and chance the list grew intolerable. He weeping sober myself silent gazing and grazing the content of his intention. My sole surviving daughter called a Nigger so offensive I fell speechless and not simply for my knowing we are all biracial stemming from an original pair most likely black in origin. Or that I provided him with no heirs to carry the ‘family name’ forward knowing too well my age and the tubal ligation of the bride of my youth; taste and choice in women thereafter.
    For a lifetime before when questioning the origin of our sir name he’d say, “We’re from a long line of chicken thieves and barn burners!” And I when more nearly mature than before knew the name differently. And not for alone the Spratt who lived on Wall Street in the home of The Exchange property become; chased and badgered with the rhyme implying theft of alms for the poor who he, under Tammany, administered. Or the one who lived on Long Island holding and breeding race horses and slaves.
    By inference or implication I knew we came from Vikings originally, possibly Berserkers, who raped, pillaged, killed, maimed and/or burned our victims. Then in a latter time settled in Scotland, Ireland, England when they were ignorant the collective “Great Britain.” Where the rhyme is recorded, initially, in A Child's Alphabet of Friends.
    No. Frankly I am bored by heritage only fascinated by legacy. The bequest from generation to generation by deeds not fortune or fame. Mythology oft bespeak truths too fantastic to believe yet in simplicity remain a thorn in our sole; a stigmata in the soul.
    If I weep now, for I do, the privilege of serving the Lord’s Blood in a pewter cup, possibly consecrated by a Spratt, Dean of Westminster Abby and buried in the vestibule. Curious. Lady Antonia Fraser confirmed my suspicions while I was the only photographer to ever get them together without bushwhack, she and Harold Pinter. He later allowed me access to the stage upon which I photographed a dress rehearsal for Trinity Repertory Theater an American premier, a play whose name escapes me now, so long ago it was.
    A point of order and recent--at the moment--discovery: I might well be a fly, yellow jacket or mud wasp pollinating from origin either waste or glory. In any case I was never satisfied to record the light reflected from anything but seeing/seeking the glowing fire from within.
    Let us now praise famous women/men who before us stood defiant and self-derived the obscenity called education provided vocational pap for nascent slaves to serve “divine rights” of Royalty or Politicians to so rule our lives.
    And in the end of my quest regarding our sir name I fell fascinated by a legend or myth beneath the one in question: “Jack Spratt could eat no fat..” It was suggested that there was before a “Jack The Giant Killer.”
    Farther I did forgive my father. In doing so became able to forgive myself the fury and welcomed my poverty as St. Francis did to his satisfaction.
    Grinning to anyone who will listen I describe the lascivious imaginings of misspending his wealth indiscriminately fathering children with women of many colors and proclivities populating a world soon to be no more.

120515 00:10
    My dream, were I to attempt expatiation, was like a chess game times five, vertical and twirling in complexity beyond three or four dimensions, possibly five!?
    In these brief moments of consideration, while brewing coffee and voiding, I came to sense it the work of a mind, mine, being willing to accept that our consciousness is vastly more complex than I’d previously considered. Yet mine in particular, more willing to accept, without apology, in child like innocence, the divinely salacious, height, width, depth, and breadth of it as common among we the species called mammalian.
    Visualization in two dimensions reminds me of black & white representations of Dante’s Divine Comedy, of which I am too little familiar otherwise ... something looked forward to. Perhaps should I live long enough and God allows.
    Perhaps I should introduce the various elements, conscious, preceding this event stellar. Today I met for the first time a woman within whom a cancer had grown blocking her esophagus rendering her unable to speak, drink, or eat, or fully breathe, dying slowly--clearly. To witness this in however brief moments I was in her presence was like watching a person drown and starve to death too slowly; completely helpless. And at that the witness of my son, by implication my father and in consequence my persistence in smoking cigarettes extenuated beyond endurance regardless my empathy.
    Earlier I’d requested a doctor to sing my DNR (Do Not Resuscitate). What evolved was a debate regarding the futility of it in current context litigious, political, moral or ethical conducted in 5/8th time. Of equal futility is my willingness to donate any or all parts of my body that another could/should live since mine are essentially worn out by age.
    God! How I adore Jesuits and others of comparable compassion in debate. Being a fool for words adored as well, I, among friends say of myself report: “Jousting with Jesuits.”
    Then too I’d been in the presence of she whom I adore unreasonably and sensed our love making fully clothed in public more fantastic than anything I’d previously longed for physically or within my two dream encounters with The Virgin Mary.
    In childhood I’d been presented with, as fixed, immutable, gospel, The Bible and Shakespeare. Yet in this context, the day and dream, reminded me of my first self-derived/discerned Truth spoken and attributed to Voltaire: “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Perhaps not verbatim yet adequate in this context.
    Suffice it to say that more important then context is the apprehension of the potential Mankind’s reply to God’s love and the passion/compassion within both.
    Process not fixed in stone ... the journey more important than the goal.
    Terminus?
    Could it have been being in the Presence? A conversation unspoken yet illustrated? Possibly annotated by a yin and yang of yes/no in black & white? If so or if not why do I now cry open eyed in joy?
    With humor my potentially only saving grace; I’d rather Truth from the Source than anything said of Him, Her or It. And if I pretend any value to so teach that anyone else can achieve the same end before we collectively stand in the court of consequence inconvenient and incontinent the truths we ignore.
    For me, finally, death has no dominion.
    A final and parting shot across the bow of my own bigotries. This dream seems to indicate that I must, in truth accept the failings of myself, unforgiven until, now the maundering's of those for whom my words, thoughts and  conclusions, remain essentially inconsequential, superfluous and the squeaking a gnat. I would contend with God but to Mankind I remain convicted that we are the body politic and the only ground of Truth potential in context: here and now. More simply said, “We must become the change we want to see in the world.” --Gandhi

http://forum.quoteland.com/1/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=586192041&f=099191541&m=1...