honoring MLK with his words and our being and our seeing justice rolling down like waters…
~
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”
Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
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I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. … We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, April 4, 1967
~
America is at a crossroads of history, and it is critically important for us, as a nation and a society, to choose a new path and move upon it with resolution and courage. … Consider, for example, the spectacle of … a nation gorged on money while millions of its citizens are denied a good education, adequate health services, decent housing, meaningful employment, and even respect, and are then told to be responsible.
Poor People’s March on Washington Announcement, December 4, 1967
~
fifty-three years later, we are at a perilous crossroads and must choose a new path which we follow unwaveringly and with great courage, great heart to be beloved community respecting the inner light, the divine spark in all our relations understanding none of us have the whole truth, we each have a thread of the truth and it is our sacred response ability to weave our thread into the web as we all co-create a cosmos that works for all…
may the force be with us and may peace prevail on earth…
for today’s edition of the astonishing light of your being, i want to share a peace that may come as a surprise as it is the farewell address given on this day 60 years ago by the former World War II general and soon to be retired commander-in-chief of the usa who used this opportunity to caution the American public “against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military industrial complex.”
listen now to this oh so prescient cautionary tale from one of the most seemingly unlikely of peacemakers…
“This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle — with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”
~ Dwight David Eisenhower ~
may we all wage and be peace with our every breath…
Lord, who can be trusted with power, and who may act in your place? Those with a passion for justice, who speak the truth from their hearts; who have let go of selfish interests and grown beyond their own lives; who see the wretched as their family and the poor as their flesh and blood. They alone are impartial and worthy of the people’s trust. Their compassion lights up the whole earth, and their kindness endures forever.
~
today, i speak again of one with a passion for justice who still guides us today on the arc of healing justice, of one who was committed to a world of peace built on justice and guided by love so powerfully developed in his Beyond Vietnam speech…
in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, King said “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” What a clear challenge to the punishment paradigm that incarcerates so many, sentencing people to death by incarceration and executing others in our name. King is calling us to evolve, to imagine a different approach to conflict, one that promotes healing and is grounded in love…
Dr. King also reminds us that we must take courageous action in order to realize our visions of a more just world. In 1968, King said“[t]here comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.”
what an amazing synchronicity that his I’ve Been to the Mountaintop address was delivered the night before he was assassinated in 1963 and so much of it hols just as true today as it was 58 years ago… regarding his wanting to live a few years in the 2nd half of the 20th century, he says,“Now that’s a strange statement to make because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick, trouble is in the land, confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men in some strange way are responding. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee, the cry is always the same: ‘We want to be free.’ And another reason I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. (Yes) Men for years now have been talking about war and peace. But now no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today. ”
in his triumphant finale, King proclaims, “Well, I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life—longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land.I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
may we all go to the mountaintop and see the promised land and wage peace and justice and love with our every thought, word, deed and breath…
on this ides of January in the moonth of dreaming, let us celebrate the birth of one of our foremost modern day prophets who dreamed of his little children living in a world where they were judged by their character rather than their color, a dream still being dreamed today along with his call of sixty years ago to face the challenge of the new age with the creation of beloved community for only love transforms the fear of the old paradigm into the gladness of a new paradigm by opening our hearts to the miracle frequency of boundless love… “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”…
Happy Birthday, Martin! celebrating you today with a great leap of faith in what is and what is coming… may we all journey with you to the mountain top where we tune in and listen to the celestial hum mapping out the path of the freedom road and journey a thousand miles and more without lifting a foot… loving how the circle of co-creators is expanding exponentially, a fractal of imaginal cells of the universe/multiverse we are… loving the flight into freedom we are sharing and so thankful for all of our relations who have paved, are paving and will pave the way…
let us close with the words of the prophet from his I Have A Dream speech…
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred…The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
That one day down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
today’s pilgrimage calls for an exceptional january jewel seed image, a special image as today’s a special day, one of my favorites… joan of arc, a lifelong shero of mine was born on this day and today is also the birthday of my beautiful daughter, my crown jules, another revered shero…
it is so fitting to mark this day, this wild and precious moment of eternity with divine feminine rising to join with sacred masculine at the start of a new year and a new decade of destiny when the stars whisper of a great turning manifesting with an adamant call to trust inner wisdom and to proceed courageously trusting unwaveringly in the knowing that love always finds the way…
with deep bows and enormous gratitude, today’s pilgrimage is dedicated to juliette, a surefooted capricorn child of the earth and to all children of the earth, our natural teachers of lovingkindness and compassion… on the occasion of the anniversary of your birth, i am seeing such an amazing turn around the sun for you, for us all…
~
yes! this is the year to take flight
to be dreamweavers of translucent, rainbow light
our cosmic heart soaring to an unimaginable height
yes! this is the year to take flight
~
what a joy to travel the way of the heart… invisible, infolding pathway of presence, trust, surrender, devotion hypnotically calling us home to true refuge, our one heart… this moment, this beautiful moment of boundless love, of taking flight on the wings of love’s angelic waves, may we be true…
“I was dead, then alive. Weeping, then laughing. The power of love came into me, and I became fierce like a lion, then tender like the evening star…” ~ Rumi ~
still under the radiation of the dark moon, now is the moment of eternity to dream of the seeds to plant, the seeds of the new moon, the potentials for the new year, the decade of the roaring twenties destiny and beyond… like you, i’m an organic gardener of the heart intending on continuing to plant seeds of devotion and humility, peace and love , joy and harmony, beauty and liberation and wisdom and simplicity… what seeds will you be planting and cultivating and watering with love?
as i dream riotously in the underground, just as i can see the sunflower seeds in full bloom, i also see the blossoming of an intention and commitment to be in wholehearted communion with the cosmos as i wander in wonder in every moment being more and more loving presence and more and more trust and more and more surrender or softening into what is… here in the dream lodge, the cave of the womb of inner knowing where everything shapeshifts, as do we, into no thing… no attachments, no possessions, no fixed identity… everything shapeshifting into flow, currents of water, waves of light… dormancy deepens trust in invisible flowering already organically unfolding in the rhythm of beloved…
how magnetic is this pathless path, this totally awesome weaving of the web of life by grandmother spider who’s breathed into form/formlessness by great mystery…
“All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. … Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it…” ~ Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
as we take true refuge more and more in the moment of eternity where we are everything simply by being in the moment… where everything shapeshifts, as do we, into no thing… no attachments, no possessions, no fixed identity… shapeshifting into flow, currents of water, waves of light… true refuge deepens trust in the invisible flowering already organically unfolding in rhythm with beloved…
“…help me to live this day quietly, peacefully. To lean upon Thy great strength trustfully, restfully. To wait for the unfolding of Thy will patiently, serenely. To meet others peacefully, joyously…” ~ St Francis ~
today’s pilgrimage has a magical mystery tour quality, a perfect backdrop for drawing down the the powerful energies of the first new moon of the new year and a perfect moment to be still and listen in a deeper way to our one cosmic heart’s whisperings for us all to invoke our shared quantum field of infinite possibilities for setting our intentions for moonifesting a cosmos of harmony where our heart beats as one resonant, unitive field…
in this moment, this beautiful moment of eternity, let’s breathe in peace deeply drawing down the rhythms of the dark moon and cultivate the mountain goat’s ability for receptive waiting by going into “thinking like a mountain” eternity consciousness… breathing in and breathing out, float down to the river below the river and see the polished stone whose jagged edges have been smoothed out by currents and whirlpools and floods and snow and glacier melts over the aeons and watch as this stone now rises revealing its true self as the sea goat of the ocean deeps and a mountain peak of quiet endurance and majestic calm, unmovable and unperturbable…
Like the ocean deep and mountain peak, we are in our core, constant and true and able to follow Capricorn’s lead to climb every mountain and to dive deeply into the ocean of being, to fulfill our shared dharma, our right way of living – to co-create a cosmos of harmony, heaven on earth consciousness… now is the moment to plant the energy intentions, to seed our shared field with the resonance of co-creation, co-llaboration and beloved communion… breathing in and breathing out our shared dream intention for a cosmos of true refuge for all our relations…
and so it is on this special day that has been so sacred forever… for example, seven years ago on this very day, i was driving home in baby blue under black skies pouring down rain when what do i see but not one but two and now three and finally four rainbows in the sky with the message that just like the sun is always shining, the sky is always rainbow colored but many of us cannot see it yet… and the last year on this day was the gamechanger, the Saturn-Pluto conjunction when the soular plexus chakra of the planet located at Uluru would be fully activated and the ritual interrupted back in the Dreamtime would be completed eleven months from a tear ago today and nine months from this day a year ago, a dancing star, an eagle child would be born so i’ll close with some prescience written a year ago on this day…
A star is being birthed … a new consciousness is now ripe to leave the birth canal and come into embodiment collectively and individually though even this division is transcended with this grand convergence into zero point continuum eternal now – blessed in the sacred conjunction of the planetary bodies at and as this threshold time collapse window into eternity is opening up and the umbilical cord to eden is restored and re-attached and that which was turned upside down is turned downside up in alignment with the naturel flow and breath of creation with rainbow serpent becoming rainbow bridge moonifesting heaven-earth consciousness…
every day is one of dreaming, every day is one of awakening… in this sacred first moonth of the new turn around the sun, we are perfumed in the essence of dreamtime carried by the energy of great mother bear through the dark tunnel into the sacred space of the dream lodge, the cave of the heart, the place beyond words, the primordial womb of great silence, of pure consciousness, true emptiness before the world begins… here we rest in the gap with silence breathing us in and out… as we hibernate in this deep cave of imagination, a new world is forming in this watery womb, this ocean of being…
breathing in and breathing out, we return to our great mother in still silence to receive essential nourishment through the cosmic umbilical cord as she breathes us into life through the placenta of the void, the organ of great mystery whispering words of wisdom, energetic seeds that are ours to germinate, sprout and blossom throughout this turning around brother sun…
may we all be gentle with ourselves and each other as we journey along the path of blessed darkness deepening into a spaciousness of silence, a consciousness of generosity and of the wisdom of the heart giving us the strength to awaken the dreamweaver within and be the ones we have been waiting for… all our relations one unbroken circle of radiant love illuminating the dark sky, revealing the wonder of dancing stars, sparkling diamonds born of the fires of purification, eternal flames mirroring the central sun, our one cosmic heart…
after this, personally and collectively, turbulent first full week in journeying january, i really wanted to share an image capturing the astonishing light of being and i wanted to share some words of hope and inspiration… it seems On Being had the same idea andasked friend and teacher John Paul Lederach to offer a reflection… he’s spent his life walking with people in many cultures through violent conflict towards transformative change…
“A Stone of Hope
The images of this week remain seared in our minds. While painful, they will not and should not be unseen, precisely because they help us look more carefully at what peers back at us from our national mirror.
We are not looking at a fringe few. We are gazing upon ourselves.
The images reminded me of the action and the words of Zechariah when pondering the question, “What are these wounds between your arms?” With hands moving toward heart the response emerged, “the wounds I received in the house of a friend.”
We are a deeply wounded nation. We know from trauma studies that our bodies carry the harm, and that the deepest pain is always the one experienced closest to home. Our wider body politic carries, not just the pain of what we witnessed this week, we carry centuries of harm — incited, delivered, and received from within our house.
I have noticed that across a wide and deeply divided political spectrum, most everyone seeks to speak for and protect the Constitution, almost as if our shared document is a victim. I would offer that the deeper casualty lies with the loss of our basic social contract. We note its disappearance when toxic social dynamics spill into the mainstream of our collective life: dehumanization replaces basic respect; blame supplants responsibility; and violence is justified over dialogue.
We also know from settings of armed conflict and from our own exemplars in this country who never stopped building the more perfect union, that it is possible to reverse these dynamics.
Perhaps Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. captured this better than anyone. He consistently appealed to guiding pillars that sustained the commitment to the social contract while pursuing long sought change for equity and equality in the midst of deep division.
His first pillar referenced the deep soul’s despair that waiting for change was no longer an option. The ploys and pragmatism of politics kept placing true equality just out of reach, deferred to the next election or into potential new legislative goals. Promises no longer sufficed. “The sweltering summer,” as he called it, could no longer accept the “tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” This temporal pillar required such immediate action — and act they did and so must we — that he referred to it as the “fierce urgency of now.”
His second pillar constantly reminded people that the struggle for equality and dignity unfolds by way of a long and difficult pathway. So significant was this temporal challenge that in his words, now etched on a national monument, the movement must “hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” Hope requires patience and persistence precisely because “the arc of the moral universe is long,” even as “it bends toward justice.”
In the midst of the temporal tension playing out between the fierce now and the long arc, Dr. King’s vision never wavered in the third pillar: the commitment to nonviolence and appreciation for our ultimate interdependence. Over and again, his imagination captured the understanding that while the past carries forward profound violation of dignity and the present continues to humiliate and divide, our future is shared. Calling this out in his “I Have a Dream” speech, he noted that across racial divides “their freedom is inextricably bound with our freedom” followed by the shortest single sentence in the speech: We cannot walk alone.
These pillars offer the way forward into renewing our social contract and reversing toxic dynamics.
Act on and walk into what you know to be true. Start local. Reach out beyond your comfort zone. Commit to nonviolence. Always protect the dignity of others. Walk together. In this the stone of hope is hewn.”
“I see a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole earth will become One Circle again.”
~ Crazy Horse ~
honoring Crazy Horse belatedly by one day day on the anniversary of his last battle in 1877 with his last vision shared with Sitting Bull a few months later during ceremony with Sacred Pipe, just before his assassination… a couple of years ago, i stood right on the land where he was killed and participated with native medicine elders in a healing riteuwell of deepest profundity…
on this day and in this moment of eternity, the universe is conspiring, breathing with us, breathing us into an amazing field of grace as venus trines mars giving us a breakthrough moment to catch the tradewinds… are you feeling the lightness of being? are you feeling that even with all the turbulence, hope is alive? we can do this, we can meet the challenges of this moment optimally by coming from a consciousness of an abundance of love and gratitude…
yes! this is the year for us to take flight
being dreamweavers of translucent, rainbow light
hearts soaring as one to unimaginable height
yes! this is the year for us to take flight…
on this ninth day of journeying january, the moon of dreaming, what is awakening in you, what beautyfull blissing is taking flight?
may we all dream and awaken to our medicine, our power, of weaving our light beingness into a seamless tapestry of lucid luminosity alive with love, liberation, compassion, wisdom, joy and the deep peace of the running wave…
