'Me' against 'Them'

In many ways, I have spent my entire life on a journey away from blame...

Having lived much of my early life in a realm of ritualistic abuse, both inside my home, and in the outer religious world that encircled me, it was natural and easy to develop a 'me' against 'them' framework of life. Fight back or be killed. Life became an adversarial contest of will and strength, and of course, blame. Problem with blame is that 'everyone' is not responsible, community is harmed, and ultimately destroyed.

As I live longer, I increasingly think in terms of 'we' and 'us' rather than terms of 'me' or 'them.' It occurs to me that when I think in, or use, the term 'them' I am descending into the narcissistic tense of all things 'me,' when in reality, there is not 'them' or 'me' but only 'us,' the collective community for which and to which we are responsible. 'We' eliminates the possibility of 'blame,' changes the monologue into one of dialog and conversation, where 'we' are all, collectively, responsible for outcomes. If 'we' are indeed 'we' then I/we must feel the full range of emotions at the same time: Love, anger, sorrow, empathy, and hope. For it is we, our collective self, that is enacting all things at one time, in the the actions and avoidance of each particular one of us.

e. e. cummings said:

we do not believe in ourselves

until someone reveals

that deep inside of us

is someone valuable,

worth listening to,

worthy of trust,

sacred to our touch...

once we believe in ourselves

we can risk curiosity, wonder,

spontaneous delight,

or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

It is this dance to which we are invited. The great partnership of 'we.' Perhaps this is what moved Jesus when he looked out over the city from high on the hillside, and simply wept. Wept for it all ... the joy, the laughter, the life, the death, the sorrow. For it is in all those things that we discover 'we,' become 'us' - the unbreakable community.

zjm

Choice

when one offers lodging to fear

its power grows until blindness

makes one unavailable

 to the power of love ~

zjm

The thing is...

If we think of ourselves as old

talk about ourselves as old

we become older than our bodies

we become old in spirit

old in heart...

then we court

death

with our hearts still beating

zjm

What is real, what is sanity?

On Monday this week, at Columbia University, Professor Emlyn Hughes stripped to his underwear in his Frontiers of Science class. This video speaks for itself, but I recommend you watch it until the very end, paying close attention to the spontaneous comments made by a young woman sitting near the camera, and to the remarks by Hughes afterward ~ zjm

Afraid In The Night

Oscar Pistorius, Olympic and Paralympic star runner, first man to compete in the Olympics running on two artificial legs, was arraigned in court today in South Africa, on charges of premeditated murder. Shot and killed his girlfriend on Valentine's day, he says, because he believed her to be a prowler in the house. A lone judge will decide his fate.

When my now 31 year old daughter was just a few weeks old, I awoke in the middle of the night, hearing a noise in the hallway outside my bedroom. My daughter's mother was not in bed next to me; I could hear her rocking and singing to our daughter in the room adjacent to ours. The noise in the hallway moved out into the living room, then out to kitchen. By now, I was convinced I was hearing footsteps, that a prowler was in the house. The steps then started back from the kitchen, and stopped in front of the door to the bedroom. Very slowly, the door opened, revealing a hulking figure back lit by the hall light. I screamed out in terror, only to discover it was my daughter's mother returning to our bed.

To this day, I believe, had there been a handgun next to the bed, I would have shot my daughter's mother, for I was certain there was a prowler in the house endangering my family in the next room.

Good fucking reason not to have a handgun in the house!

No one will ever know what happened in the Pistorius household that night, irrespective of any verdict of law. What we do know, is that some kind of fear took possession in that house. And when fear takes hold of us, in the night, or in the bright light of noonday, bad stuff tends to happen.

Good reason to master our fears.

Jesus Returns!