Taking A Time Out

I am an American citizen.  At one time, I considered becoming a Japanese citizen and living in Japan for the rest of my life with my family and Japanese husband.  My friends were Japanese, my food was Japanese, my home was Japanese.

One of the things I enjoyed the most about

Original is from
Life Of Man

living in Japan was the awareness of the communally agreed upon rules of conduct.  I recall experiencing harmony on many occasions.  

During this time, I was taken to the city of Hiroshima by a good friend, Kazuko.  When I walked up to the entrance of the site of the memorial of the epicenter of the atom bomb dropped in 1945, I was approached by activists.  I was asked to tell the United States government to pay money for the suffering caused to the people of Hiroshima.

I said, "It was a WAR!"  I had learned that anything goes in times of war.  Defining the parameters of war only required that the "bad" country had done "bad" things. That makes it okay to do anything required to stop them from doing more "bad" things.  I thought that the deaths caused by the atom bomb were a good trade for ending a world war.

By Glee 2012: Acrylic on canvas

This perspective holds dear the rationalization that having the most powerful destructive capability in the world brings peace.  This works well if the owner of the most powerful force is compassionate and wise.

How can humans keep a powerful weapon from being used again in the future?  Once a weapon is birthed, we cannot un-birth it.  We cannot return it to "nothing". What do we do with it?

Make certain we each have a nuclear bomb.  Then we are all equally powerful.  And compassionate and wise?  Oops. What about the folks who don't have one?  Well, they can sit under the safety of the ones who do, like small chicks under a mother hen.  A big mean mother hen.  Oh, wait.  She's not mean, she's only protecting her brood.  Let's not go after the chickens.  Or the mothers for that matter. Hmmm.  Mothers.  Maybe we should refer to them as bears, instead of chickens.  Are we getting off track here with all of these analogies?  Let's face it, analogies make this nasty subject a bit more palatable.

Really, seeing what happened to the people of Hiroshima broke me into a million pieces.  Pieces of sadness that can never be put back together.  I don't talk about it very much.  But I feel it constantly.  I feel a lot more, honestly, of everything.  Life, you see, is precious.  I wake up every day with joy and gratitude because I have seen an example of the extent of our ability as humans to create utter darkness in the name of peace.  It seems like dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima goes against the commonly agreed upon code of conduct in war.

No one ever punished the United States for using nuclear weapons on men women and children of Japan.  Yes, Japan did some terrible things.  This cannot be forgotten.  But, the US certainly upped the bar for what constitutes power.

If the international community, then in shambles,  had punished America, or the governance of America, would things be different now?  Could we have banned the use of nuclear weapons?  Would we have had the cold war?  Would we have set up boundaries for new countries in the Middle East?  Would Syria exist and be protected by Iran and Russia?  And how can America protect the people of Syria now that sarin gas has been used to kill women and children?  Can sarin gas be treated like a weapon of mass destruction?  Or is it a whole other ball of wax?

9 Questions About Syria You Were Too Embarrassed To Ask 

by Max Fisher Washington Post 8/29

Wait, what was the Geneva Convention and what does it have to do with Syria?  

Find out here:
Wiki Geneva Conventions
Did you read it? At least some of it?

So, the way the international community keeps power balanced is by recognizing universally that a certain kind of weapon stinks!  We all agree not to do certain things that stink, but it's okay to fight. Especially if it is a civil war. You know, like a football game.  If a little bit of hurt comes out of it, it's okay.  A win comes out of playing by the rules.  All in good fun? Perfect harmony and we all go home and heal from our day in combat.  No hard feelings.  Yeah, right.

I think with nuclear weapons, it's fairly well understood that dropping one on the Middle East today would not be a good solution.  We've seen what's possible and it stinks.  But, if you'll notice, the United States is currently and has recently committed many of the acts considered Grave Breaches in countries and situations where America feels required to protect and defend.  Protective Power as agreed upon in the Geneva Convention.  How did we get from "protection" to "punishment"?  The United States abides by this convention when it serves us and we do not when it does not serve us.

Maybe this explains the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam.  Or the torture of "terrorists" who are held captive without trial.

I'm confused.

How are we supposed to feel about the use of chemical weapons in Syria? Our own government is suggesting we punish the Syrian government in order to stop the widespread use of chemical weapons in all warfare from here on out.  This will be done with missiles shot from boats for up to six weeks, because missiles are okay, but sarin gas is not.

As far as I understand it, the original Geneva Convention was created to bring a modicum of humanity into the violence of war.  It meant peaceful folks could go in and help those who are being hurt.  So that compassion could exist along side of the violence and destruction. Wouldn't this make it legal for the US to go in and help all of the refugees and oppressed people of Syria?

How about this: Instead of attacking Assad with weapons, let's help the oppressed .  Let's send in a force of a million unarmed aid workers and healers moving in a blob, a real person from each country present and ready to give a life to end the use of chemical weapons.  Each piece of equipment and each person is checked and cleared as unarmed.  They go in, scoop up, dismantle, and dispose of the weapons in return for leaving the Assad government intact.  They help or remove those who are being injured.  And they leave.  Let's call it a peace cease that is backed whole heartedly by the international community.  I know.  It's crazy.  And it doesn't bring lasting peace to Syria.  But at least it's a vision.  After all, Assad needs to learn a new way of dealing with conflict.  He learned only violence from his father, Hafez.  Yes, Assad was a little boy once.  I wonder how he was treated?

I am visualizing a world where the oppressed are cared for and protected, where weapons of mass destruction and death aren't possessed by any nation.  A place where we no longer need a Geneva Convention.  A world where we are all connected and we are all one with a human face.

Listen to this!  
I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing In Perfect Harmony
And remember that finding a new paradigm requires dying to the old one.

Learn more: 

U.S. used chemical warfare in Vietnam

Chemical Weapons (The truth about the ongoing effects of Agent Orange the US used in Vietnam)

CALLING ALL SUPER HEROES!

It all started with capes.
And, yes, santa is super. 

 I have two sons, six and four.  According to mass media, and product choices, there’s a certain level of expectation around being a boy.

Four-year-old Arlo embraced the super hero whole-heartedly.  Somehow I think it might have started with the character underpants.  Not much else available, honestly.  There’s The Flash, Spiderman, Green Lantern, the Hulk, Wonder Woman, Batman, and others made up on the spot.  Together, the children bring these characters to life.  The life stories of these characters mean little to tiny minds, but the POWER means everything. 

Obama! Another super hero.
He can fly! 

In my imagination, the super part of a hero comes from an unfortunate oddity that sets them apart from their peers.  These individuals are on a life-long path of antisocial behavior by overcoming a disability.  I just wrote that and I want to erase it.  But, really, what is social about coming to the rescue of society by beating the crap out of the “bad guys”?  Often, the “bad guys” have some kind of oddity that sets them apart from their peers as well.  They’re social misfits, each and every one of them.   So, does it help to tell my boys, “He’s not bad, he just does bad things?”

What is different about the hearts and minds of heroes that set them apart from the villains?  Choices.  Most people can reel off the different characteristics without a thought. There is good vs. bad, light vs. dark, rich vs. poor, left vs. right, and it goes on and on.  One thing is clear, we are strongly encouraged to choose one over the other.  So often, we believe, these choices lead either toward or away from the American Dream.   In reality, I see the successful folks doing bad things to get to good places.  I see people living good lives and having bad things happen to them.  There are still other examples of good folks getting to good places.  Wow, this is so confusing. 

Yep. Me with my buds. 

When I observe my child playing superheroes, I see that someone has to be the villain so someone can be the savior.   At first glance, it seems healthy to explore identity this way.  How often do we get to try on the dastardly role while our friends pull off the saint?  Probably more often than we think.   Having a BAd day?  Don’t stop for pedestrians who want to cross the street.  It’s not your day.  You deserve the break, and he or she can wait for a nice person who has time.  Someone else should be cheering YOU up.  When you feel like you are having a GOOD day, you can be the saint.  Hmm.  I wonder if I am the only one who does this. 

Queries:  Are you really working so hard to be the good person you think you are?  How do you know the difference between good and bad?  Once we’re bad, are we always bad?  Is there good in everyone waiting to grow and bloom?  Is being helpful, kind, non-judgmental, and compassionate actually useful in this world?  Or is it more important to be powerful?

Bumper sticker. 

I asked my kids to consider playing superheroes without playing bad guys.  They agreed it was more fun ‘cause they get to be on the same team.  They stop lightning from striking the city, and volcanoes from burying towns.  It’s the dichotomy I am trying to get away from.  So when it comes time for the government to bring war into the heart and mind of my child, he might have a chance to question the validity of murdering the villain.  Hope it works.  

Learn more:  Witness (1985 film) clip-A lesson about bad guys for an Amish boy. 
                     Surreal Super Why (youtube clip) 
                     Top 10 Non-White Super Heroes

The Deconstructionist

When I was five years old, I realized a world of wonder and infinite curiosity.  I lived close to the land in Northern California with my activist-hippie-mom and brother.  Life was about sunshine, dirt, and the smell of goats.  Though my father was out of the picture, I was told both he and my grandmother were artists.  I didn’t know what an artist was, but all of the strange things I did and thought seemed to be linked to this notion of making things, to which my mother simply surrendered to as my inherent gifts.

One of the things I began doing right away was deconstruction.  In a tangible way, it was boxes of any kind turned into containers of a different form, a turntable dismantled and made to perform as a radio, while I ran my fingers over the solder spots, and heard things through the speaker.  In other ways, it was thinking beyond the boundaries.  For me, it was soothing to think of the myriad ways in which to look at the world around me.  I could see small and imagine big.  I was sensitive and aware. 

I am still this child and I am still a deconstructionist.  I love to see the possibilities of things, especially things considered no longer useful.  It’s wise, I believe, to know when things are no longer useful and are ready to evolve into something new.  Both in ourselves and in the material world, for they reflect one another.  I once did a three-person show, at The Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sacramento, on reconstructed grocery bags.  They became like Japanese scrolls complete with tassels embellished with expressive pastel people contorted onto the skin of the bags.  I painted in acrylic on discarded pull-down window shades.  The figures were asked to exist the world of the picture window, too tall, or stuck in a shallow space with words surrounding them.  They were bright, refreshing, and honest. 

Now, it is T-shirts from boxes of free items on street corners turned into skirts and pants with messages of humor and social change. And there are large-scale drawings on thick, fibrous, paper of people transformed into icons and melding into images of connectedness, love, and systemic social change.  The paper is like skin, the essence of the trees upon which they are feeding.  There is a contagious boldness to the work, complete with gold and copper or fake money to lure the “eye of the crow” and to challenge the viewer to be her truest self.  The art is coming from a spiritual place.  It is asking us to consider another way of seeing things.  We are being asked to open to the idea of falling in love with humanity and to manifest beauty through our brave visions of a new world in America.  

Learn more:  Open To Love: A Facebook Community
                     Deconstruction:  I Just Found This (2 Minute Youtube)

How To Talk To A Flower

The Real McCoy    by Glee 

Pretty pink flower

Torn from your branch

You endure my grasp.

I chose you,

Not so carefully,

To be my alter for today.

Then I saw your

Dark spots

And remembered hidden bugs emerging

From blossoms previously picked.

With fortitude

I sought to change

The outcome this time ‘round.

And turned you upside down

And shook

And shook

And shook.

A petal fell

To stay my violent hand.

Oh, my regret

To find you weren’t as strong

and fresh as I had hoped.

A second passed…

I see I've made you weak

And imperfection glares at me.

Guilt rises like floodwater

As I focus my eyes

On the black remains

Of your life before you blossomed.

Those tiny scars

Embedded in your bright pink flesh

Are not bugs at all

But evidence

Of your growth and change to come.

You are an imperfect vessel of love. 

I judged you hastily.

And injured us both ever after.

Forgive me.

Learn more:  Bole: Willingness To Feel-Opening To Understanding (Youtube: 8 minutes)

                     Doing Business The Quaker Way (An odd reminder to Quakers by Forbes Magazine)

                                           

The Galaxy Song

I see the stars up in the sky

And they become the faces

Of all the humans  

Who didn't die

Who didn't lie

Who couldn't cry

For the one who shone so brightly 

That the heavens gave him back to Earth

How did so many, who were in so much pain, so much sadness, hold back the anger and move forward  into a new paradigm without the sun to light the way?  In the darkness of winter, we cannot forget being burnt by the sun.  

Love.  LOVE. LOVE!!!

See more: The Stars and Galaxy Song (With Lyrics!)

                I Have A Dream Speech (Watch Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Open To Love

Dear Elementary School Principal,

Thank you for making efforts to ensure my child’s safety at school.  I don’t want my child to experience a violent death or to see his friends and teachers die violently.  It is one of the most terrifying things I can imagine.  Unfortunately, the reality of this kind of violence is already here with us in the world.  Our children are too young to understand a lot of what we are feeling since the Clackamas Town Center shooting and the shooting at Shady Hook Elementary in Connecticut.  However, I do believe that they can feel our fear in our actions, and in some of the sudden changes in rules concerning safety since our return to school after the winter break.  Specifically, that all classroom doors are to be locked from the inside during school hours.  

When I am afraid, I also want lock my door to keep my children safe.  But then, I take them back out into the world and show them that the world is what we make of it.  I do this out of the love I feel for my child and for every person with whom I come into contact each day.  Though we are not the people of Newtown, Connecticut, we can feel what they are feeling.  Our loss of trust is palpable.  We brought our children back to school with the hope that they will be safe.  But, our locked doors are showing them that they are not.  

This letter is in regard to how one particular safety precaution has changed my son’s experience at school.  

This week, he told me about some new rules regarding access to the restroom.  This is how he explained the change.  Upon returning from the restroom, the children must knock on the door or window to the classroom, wait until the teacher or a classmate comes to see that it is someone from class or someone who was in his teacher’s class the year before, then the door can be opened.  He suggested that the rule should be that the children pound loudly on the door because the teacher doesn’t always hear them at first.

I opened the letter explaining safety precautions this morning.  It said nothing of the locked classroom doors.  I had to hear that from my son.  I understand what this rule means and why the school district has instituted the change.  My child does not.  I’m not sure I want to tell him that we are all afraid that some person (it could be anyone, including a child), will walk into the school with a gun, go into the class room, and shoot six to ten bullets into his classmates bodies until they die.  I can’t even fathom how we have arrived at such a place in history.  He has known no other way.

I do think that Ollie and his classmates feel the impact of the changes in other ways.  Consider the message we are giving them.  They are being protected from some unknown assailant.  Their school and classrooms are unsafe places to be.  (These are kids who are still having a hard time getting used to being away from caregivers, parents, or a daycare they have grown to love and trust.) They may feel they are no longer safe in the halls when they are locked out of their classrooms and the door is not answered when they knock.  I wonder how they feel when someone is looking at them and deciding whether or not they belong behind the door through which they are requesting entry.   Our children are left to wonder why they are not given a weapon with which to protect themselves from danger.  They may feel like they are vulnerable when before they felt strong and capable.  I wonder if they are thinking about what this dangerous person will look like.  Will they look at everyone as a potential killer?  Will they begin to suspect that anyone who would hurt them must be different from him or her?  Will the children develop new ways of protecting themselves in this now unsafe environment?  Will they recall how they practiced hiding in the corner in the dark?  Will they notice that even the adults are feeling fear? 

There was a time in our not too distant past, when not all citizens of the United States were welcomed into all of the buildings and classrooms of our public schools to get an education.  Today, there is access.  We have swung the door wide and we are working hard to keep those doors open to all who would pursue an education.  We do this because we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  We do this because we are all human beings and we are all connected in our fear, striving, joy, love, discovery, and want for success.  I would like to see our doors remain open both physically and symbolically. 

I love my community, my neighborhood school, and all of the children, educators, administrators, custodians, and lunch servers in it.  It is a testimony to love and hope for the future to work in our public schools.  I am humbled and I have the utmost respect for what you do in your role as principal at Vernon Elementary and Middle School.  This must be a very challenging subject for you and your staff.

I have a vision of what our public school could be like.  It has less to do with test scores, however, and more to do with loving, open, compassionate friendship, where all of the children are learning in a safe, open environment.  It is a place where our children know that the world is what we make of it.  We have the power to protect by unlocking the doors.  Unlocking the doors to the classrooms is opening to one another, to our potential for compassion.  It is being open to a different way of raising our children.  Do we teach them to obey with threats of consequences or violence?  Or do we love them when they are making mistakes and listen when they are crying out for help? 

I think we can find ways to teach safety without locking the doors to our classrooms.  It could be a place where a child could go for help to any classroom or to any student or educator.  I would like to see a public school system and a community where voices are heard and access to help is available.  If we can begin by demonstrating to our children and to ourselves that we feel safe and strong, maybe we can prevent more violence from happening. And maybe all of the adults in this world will start setting down our weapons one by one until the last nuclear missile is dismantled and the armies are called in from the playground. 

I would like to leave you with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..  It is an excerpt from Beyond Vietnam, A time to Break Silence, delivered on April 4^th, 1967 at Riverside Church, New York City.

            “When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response.  I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh.  I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.  Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door, which leads to ultimate reality.  This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate –ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God.  And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.  He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.”  “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.’  Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.” 

Thank you for your time and consideration on this subject.  I look forward to your response to this matter. 

Sincerely,

Mother of a six year old child in the United States of America 

The God of Wet Things

I had a vision in the silence.  There is a sparkling, clear aquifer deep under the earth.  It took hundreds of years to become this way.  Water filtered down through hard rock, clay, roots of trees, grass, and air, even through our own bodies.  It filters through everything in our world and has always existed.  The only way for it to become truly clean is for it to move ever gently through the earth to where it collects in one place, together.  It is a celebration of interconnectedness.  It is evidence that we are all touched in some way by the same substance, by one of the elements that give us life.  It is an ancient idea ever living and changing.  And it is gentle.  It is very gentle.  It takes time.  The water is powerful in its patience and its loyalty to the laws of gravity.   It can do nothing but collect together.  It is powerful in its ability to transform.  It can be caught, but it can escape.  It escapes because we need it.  It will always be needed.  We will always be thirsty.   Life is about satisfying this thirst.  

The pure water is rare anymore.  I grew up drinking, bathing, swimming, and cooking, with water from a huge aquifer under the wetlands of the Sacramento Valley in California.  In the summer, the well would bring the water effortlessly to the surface.  I could feel the aquifer under the red clay dirt of the open fields. 

It was delicious.  It felt good on my body, like it was conducting electricity from one nerve to another making me whole.  I could become new again in the water.  It was a clean that had nothing to do with scrubbing, soap, or heat.

The creeks and rivers were never far away.  They were inviting and clean with deep clear pools filled with gray and white rocks.  Life-abound in the water and by its shores.  It changed the rocks, the sandstone hillsides from year to year.  The water never stopped.  We dove, waded, swam, floated, and splashed.  We made a ritual out of visiting Clear Creek in Happy Valley, where I lived as a small child near Redding, California.  There were mossy, slimy big rocks to climb over and shallow creek beds to navigate. My tiny foot would step on uneven rocks with balance so lightly given that even the flow of the water was accounted for in the strength of my step.  I can still hear the constant tiny bells of the water against rocks and static white noise of rushing water. There was so much to know to stay safe, but the rules were simple, and reliable.  The water was powerful, but it always let me in.  The water was cold.  It forced me to take a deep breath and to cry out with the kind of joy that accompanies a ride on a roller coaster, eyes open wide, mouth in a wide tight circle, body held stiff with anticipation.  Exhilarating!

The ponds were warm on the top and cool underneath.  So misleading.  They were still and responsive.  If there was movement, it was shared like a secret among school children.  Ponds were alive below the surface, where things could hide and multiply.  Frogs, fish, plants, and bugs would fill the water to capacity.  Adding myself to the mix felt warm and alive, but murky.  My only demise would have been to swim out too far and not have the energy to get back.  The air was often swarming with life just waiting to be eaten by the creatures in the pond.  The entire life cycle could be played out around that microcosm of a hole with a trickle of water flowing through. 

I live a new life with water, now.  Time has made demands on our water.  It holds the life that we give it.  In all of its forms, it cleans, cools, transports, powers, quenches, cooks, grows, destroys, and more.  How could humans disrespect something that is so close to our very existence?  We need it.  Like we need love.  Its presence and movement is unpredictable.  So we save it, just in case.  We clean it and recycle it.  We also dirty the water in ways that change its very essence.  Now, why do we do this? 

Stop here. 

We need it like we need love.  We are born out of water.  We float in a warm, loving, dark, pool of water before we are born. We breathe liquid in the womb of our mothers.  Our bodies are formed in amniotic fluid.  Then the water breaks and birth follows.  New life arrives out of water. The air we breathe contains water.  It is easy to stop water from flowing, and then again it is notoriously hard to stop.  You know this if you have ever wet your pants.  It is frightening and dangerous at one moment and life giving at another.  Yet, at other times, it is completely neutral.  It is the particles that make up a rainbow. 

We learn to process water through our bodies by quenching our thirst and then responding to pain with release. To become civilized, we control the way water goes through our bodies.  Liquid is transformed in our systems and a whole new product comes out.  So, it seems natural that we would figure out how to put water into a system and allow it to be used and transformed into something unclean.  Are we just doing something that comes natural to us?  It's not unlike when we run water through the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant.  We are a creative species.  Perhaps thinking up new ways to process things is what we do best. 

A vision of the crystal clear aquifer comes back to me when I get muddled with thoughts of dams, erosion, levees, fracking, and melting glaciers.  I see the strength of the earth holding back the rushing water.  Then rocks and dirt move aside and allow themselves to be deposit in another place, a process held together by gravity.  This movement is fluid, forever changing from soft to hard.  The earth holds the water with gentle support.  Never possessing it against its will.  The water breaks her, softens her, and moves her aside, but never destroys her, for the two are connected.  They are connected like they are with all living things.  Like voluntary and involuntary bodily functions, it is an eternal dance of opening and closing, freedom and force.  Maybe we have something to learn from this relationship.  Sacred bodies, sacred earth.  

Learn More: Things to See and Hear

Help Stop Fracking: Earth Justice

The Woodlands:  The Story of Fracking

Fracking Explained with Animation

Water, Consciousness and Intent