“‘Let Justice roll down like waters in a mighty stream,’ said the Prophet Amos. He was seeking not consensus but the cleansing action of revolutionary change.”

~ Martin Luther King, Jr ~

i love the quotation above so much that i wanted to post it again to wellcome you to the third day of justice june and a moon of justice rolling down in cleansing actions guided by love creating a world of peace… again, as we are in this crossroads moment witnessing justice being denied and feeling a planetary tidal wave of grief, this is the moment for us all to join hands and stand in love for love being justice in every thought, word and deed, occupying the energy of balance and harmony real-eye-sing there’s only one of us here as we pick up our threads in the great unraveling to co-create an even more beautiful world…

i have been called to float serenely in the sea of love energy today, no body surfing the waves, my nervous system simply needs the central sun and ocean of being and love love love today… and so i offer once again all ambassadors of love a litany from the Reverend Dr Yolanda Pierce, the first woman to be appointed as Howard University’s Dean in the Divinity School’s 150-year history… although she directs it toward those not ready for healing yet in the midst of the river of sorrows we are floating in, it feels so healing to me like those cleansing waters of justice called into our being at the beginning of this love letter…

“Litany for Those Who Aren’t Ready for Healing

Let us not rush to the language of healing, before understanding the fullness of the injury and the depth of the wound.

Let us not rush to offer a band-aid, when the gaping wound requires surgery and complete reconstruction.

Let us not offer false equivalencies, thereby diminishing the particular pain being felt in a particular circumstance in a particular historical moment.

Let us not speak of reconciliation without speaking of reparations and restoration, or how we can repair the breach and how we can restore the loss.

Let us not rush past the loss of this mother’s child, this father’s child…someone’s beloved son.

Let us not value property over people; let us not protect material objects while human lives hang in the balance.

Let us not value a false peace over a righteous justice.

Let us not be afraid to sit with the ugliness, the messiness, and the pain that is life in community together.

Let us not offer clichés to the grieving, those whose hearts are being torn asunder.

Instead…

Let us mourn black and brown men and women, those killed extrajudicially every 28 hours.

Let us lament the loss of a man, dead at the hands of a police officer who described him as a demon.

Let us weep at a criminal justice system, which is neither blind nor just.

Let us call for the mourning men and the wailing women, those willing to rend their garments of privilege and ease, and sit in the ashes of this nation’s original sin.

Let us be silent when we don’t know what to say.

Let us be humble and listen to the pain, rage, and grief pouring from the lips of our neighbors and friends.

Let us decrease, so that our brothers and sisters who live on the underside of history may increase.

Let us pray with our eyes open and our feet firmly planted on the ground

Let us listen to the shattering glass and let us smell the purifying fires, for it is the language of the unheard.

God, in your mercy…

Show me my own complicity in injustice.

Convict me for my indifference.

Forgive me when I have remained silent.

Equip me with a zeal for righteousness.

Never let me grow accustomed or acclimated to unrighteousness.”

in this critical moment of apocalypse, lifting of the veils, when we are called to be wise as serpents and see clearly the injustice and suffering, may we also re-member our calling to be gentle as doves in service to all relatives trusting in the perfection of the cosm, the implicate order that we are made for these times to rise in love singing, we shall overcome…

~

rising, i descend into opening to the clear light to dreamweave the world awake while flowing with the river along the liberation pathless path…

in this liminal space, this threshold, this moment of eternity with the world we knew unraveling and uncertainty all around, picking up our thread to re-weaving the world anew is the order of the day, the great work we are called to offer as we take this wild and precious moment surrender into the devocean of interbeing…

join me in these sacred waters reveling in the luminosity of the clear light
dreamweaving the world of wisdom and wonder awake…

 we are dreamweavers
whole and holy
wild and free.
gatekeepers of divinity
 
the sacred waters of the cosmic wombspace reveal
the dreams we carry, the dreams forgotten,
the dreams long remembered…

as holy vessels of heaven/earth, we surrender our entire
being for these dreams to be heard, felt, called forth,
woven into the sacred web of life for the greatest good of all beings…
 
this is a sacred commitment to live our devocean…
 
this is our starseed destiny…

into the watery womb, speak a dream aloud that you are actively tending for yourself and the collective…
take a deep breath feeling into the energies present and listening for nature’s response…

as spirit and matter merge,
and the mythic and mundane together re-weave, 
it is done, it is done, it is done…

we are dreamweavers 
dreaming the world awake
here and now
always and forever…

and so it is, and so it is, and so it is…
blessed bee, blessed bee, blessed bee…

take all that I say,
and toss away
all that does not
resonate
for we do not learn
wisdom and wonder
we re-member what’s within…

“‘Let Justice roll down like waters in a mighty stream,’ said the Prophet Amos. He was seeking not consensus but the cleansing action of revolutionary change.”

~ Martin Luther King, Jr ~

well come to justice june once again, i say once again for these were my opening words two years ago following the murder of George Floyd, a murder that opened the eyes of so many of us across the planet to the horrors of white supremacy with so many calls for actions that would lead to justice rolling down in cleansing actions guided by love creating a world of peace… and, and a year ago i wrote that here we are again still in a crossroads moment witnessing justice being denied and feeling a planetary tidal wave of grief wondering why is it so difficult to change, how could we still be hearing daily about more murders? for the third straight year, as we begin justice june it is a moment of eternity when our hearts are so heavy with 16 mass shootings in the last eight days and the last one i know of happening a few hours ago on the St Francis hospital campus in Tulsa…

two years ago in this moment of eternity, i wrote that this is the moment for us all to join hands and stand in love for love being justice in every thought, word and deed… i still hold this is the moment for that and for so much more… it is way past overdue to pass the George Floyd Policing Act and the Breathe Act and gun regulation laws and for each of us in our communities to do what we can no matter how small an action to promote justice and a world where everyone is safe to walk down the streets, go to the movies and the grocery store and to school and to medical appointments and on and on…

today, a mass shooting in Tulsa and on this day a hundred and one years ago a terrible massacre occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma – let’s see what lessons about justice and re-building and re-conciliation we might learn from this dark moment…

“I will never forget the violence of the white mob when we left our home. I still see Black men being shot, black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot. I will not and other survivors do not and our descendants do not.”
~Viola Fletcher, 107-year-old survivor of Tulsa Massacre~

on this day a century and a year ago, the most successful African American business district in the country at that time-Greenwood-was obliterated following a White mob coming into the Greenwood District, looting the businesses, setting fire to the buildings and homes, dropping turpentine bombs from planes on the buildings from above, and killing 300 Black people…

here we are, 101 years after Greenwood burned, and we are still in the throes of White supremacy and of turning to violence… when will we dismantle this consciousness and work to repair the breach? let us do some heavy lifting this moonth… i’ll close with a way the Tulsa Massacre was commemorated a century later using trees, education and re-conciliation to channel resilience… there is an elm tree still standing that witnessed the massacre where 10,000 people were left homeless and now it is dedicated as a memorial and an inspiration to our ability to continue growing and changing… community members were given elm seedlings to plant all over the city…

“We are all… planting the seeds of reconciliation, and hope, and love,” says Glenda Love-Williams, the co-chair of fundraising for the Tulsa Massacre Centennial Commission. “This is our way of celebrating healing and reconciliation.” may we all be inspired to look deeply within and plant seeds of reconciliation, hope and love and water them with justice with every breath so that all living beings walk in balance and peace…

listening for our heartsong…

listen, listen, listen for our heartsong, we will never forget you we will never forsake you…

 here we are at the close of another moonth and what a moonth it has been with the messages to slow down and listen for the heartsong while deepening more and more into the field of spaciousness out beyond becoming more and more emphatic… join me now in the deep timelessness of this field of sacred space with some four fold deep cleansing breaths imagining we are in a beautiful crystalline grove of true refuge with a river running through that we sit beside in sacred ontemplativec silence… with every breath, we are more and more in ease and equanimity and as we begin to breathe through our one cosmic heart, saying, I Love You, I am here for you and we give ourselves a hug and pats to our shoulders as we continue with our deep clean-sing breaths looking into our own eyes saying, You are my Beloved, I open my heart to you as we place our hands on our heart embracing ourselves with unconditional love… and we raise our open palms to the crown chakra transmitting the light we are out in ever widening circles as we trace with our hands the energetic luminous field of light we are around our body, our one body of trillions and trillions of light cells…

still in the radiation of the new moon in gemini, the cosmic womb, the navigating the journey moon, let’s anchor this wild and precious moment as creativity creating creation setting our compass and contemplating the map we’ll draw for this moon journey  around the quest ions of:

how will we nurture creativity?

what will we focus on creating?

what will we be/do to deepen and heighten soulful creation?

 Now, as we prepare to return, let us take this moment of eternity to call all noble hearts to find within the divine light of love knowing the great oversoul is always shining…

may this light expand on the earth showering her face with peace and harmony…
may this light calm and harmonize the black shadow of war, violence, hate and disharmony .
may this light fill the hearts of all relatives and wash away the cries of the distressed, the blood of the victims of violence, the pain of the one family we are…

may they be replaced by the innocent laughter of children, the ideals of youth and the wisdom of life of our elders…
may we no longer know the signs of strife or hear birds singing sorrows, nor watch clouds stained with blood, nor feel breezes intense with heat, nor see rivers swollen by the mountains’ tears that new bonds of unity and peace are formed through our invocation together… 

may we all come into a deeper and more expansive knowing of who we truly are… slowed down sound and light waves in a sea of love energy, the ocean of being, the flowering field of interconnection and may we take this extraordinary moment to do the deep work of radical (rooted) change by plugging into the taproot/umbilical cord in the core of our interbeing and aligning our antennae with the source antenna… blessed bee…

~

i awaken today as the sun is actually rising – most days, it is raining – re-membering it is the new moon of gemini and i’m feeling the energy shift and that it is memorial day here in the usa, a day i choose to celebrate the peacemakers of the world… i’ve spent much time over the last few days with one of the most devoted beings of liberation and living in peace and harmony – mahatma gandhi which has catapulted me into that field out beyond, the sacred listening circle of satyagraha meaning in pursuit of truth… let’s gather together drawing down the energy of this new moon and take in the words of another amazing peacemaker who brings us to membering again the wisdom that there is only one of us here and opens our one heart to greater compassion… as we read this poem, let us re-member our mindful breathing… breathing in, re-member Thay is life without limits… breathing out, re-member that Thay has never been born and never died…

~

Please Call Me By My True Names

“Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow—
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am also the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.”

~

today is the 105th birthday of the 35th President of the United States… JFK was assassinated during his term in office while serving the causes of peace and nuclear disarmament… to celebrate his memory and legacy, i have been circling with other peacemakers including hours with mahatmaji and now i’ll post some stirring words of his (JFK’s) that are taken from a 1961 address to the United Nations and still ring so true today:

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race – to advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has been achieved.”

in June of 1963, five months before he was shot, he continued in the same vein in a Commencement Address at American University, where JFK delivered A Strategy for Peace:

“…I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived–yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

…I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war–and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament-and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitude–as individuals and as a Nation–for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward–by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable–that mankind is doomed–that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are man made – therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable – and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace–based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions–on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace–no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process–a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor–it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it…”

yes, let us persevere and move irresistibly toward peace…

namaste’

we are souls floating in sound and light waves singing our songs through our flowing field of starling body instruments…

woo hoo! welcome to 5/28, the miracle solfeggio frequency of flow, a perfect moment to tune into the cosmic hum singing us real-eye-sing we are instruments of peace, love and joy, hollow reeds through which the frequencies of blessing flow in each moment of eternity… it is also the day seven years ago of a 350 mile excursion across Oregon and north to the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers and the states of Washington and Idaho… arriving at the Gateway to Hell’s Canyon, a place i’d never been before, was as exciting as it was novel, a place of naked beauty and muted rainbow colors reflecting in the waters… we had come to the 11,000 year old home of the first people for a dedication ceremony for the listening circle at Chief Timothy Park, a project ten years in the making, a work of love honoring the original people who are now known as the Nez Perce, a people who have always been welcoming to those in need, a people dedicated to living in peace…

perhaps you’ll join with me in re-membering our journey to the stars by breathing in deeply through our one heart and down, down, down into the belly… into the stillpoint of creation, the watery womb, stable ground of all being, home to peace passing all understanding, beloved community’s belonging place… injoy this moment, this beautiful moment of blessings arising synchronisticly… flowing through you, flowing through me, flowing from the buoyantsea, the hum of cosmic harmony…

thanks be and how fitting that a Lakota seer speaks in 39 words the mission bringing us into the middle of the sea on our way to the other shore for 39 symbolizes liberation and 39 is the age when i spent a summer in a tipi on Rosebud, a Lakota reservation contemplating this very same spirit journey we are all eternally traver-sing and re-membering we live in an amazing spiral galaxy of 300 billion stars in a cosmos of 2 trillion galaxies and our galaxy, like ourselves, is ever creating, ever renewing and all of the stars are within us and we are stardust, waves and particles of sound and light compressed and compressed into what looks like matter here on an earth walk to make the quantum leap back into our true nature as dancing stars ever creating, ever renewing…

  let’s seal this sacred space with some four fold deep cleansing breaths imagining we are in a crystalline grove with a river running through that we sit beside in sacred silence… with every breath, we are more and more in ease and equanimity and as we begin to breathe through our one cosmic heart, we say, I Love You, You are my Beloved as we place our hands on our hreart embracing ourselves with unconditional love…

~

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”

~ Maya Angelou ~

eight years ago following a sound bath, i posted this image to capture the sound of falling water for a pilgrim, a poet on a journey as she travels the spirit path… like the goddess of wisdom, water, too, must sing out freely and then come to rest in a still, silent pool… 

imagine my surprise the next day when i awoke to hear of the author of I Know Now Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou’s release to always be our rainbow bird singing of love, peace and joy freely across the cosmic sky… let us celebrate maya’s life, an astonishing light of being and all peacemakers with her profound poem on peace, A Brave and Startling Truth, that she read at the United Nation’s 50th anniversary in 1995…

“We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.”

yes, may we come to it real-eye-sing our true nature as a rainbow sea of  love energy taking joy and peace in the sounds of falling waters flowing in rhythm home to our one cosmic heart…

i’m sorry

please forgive me

thank you

i love you

for the last several years, this moment of eternity is a sojourn of  embarking on a deep dive into the watery realms, i awaken today with ho’oponopono, the ancient purification chant, singing me and calling me to listen, listen to the heartsong of the waters falling home and to bathe in the healing waters hearing the echoes of moons gone by… four years ago the heartsong even came in with quite an extraordinary lucid dream of presence, of being so fully in the present moment as love… i’m on a plane flying at high altitude with my soul daughter on one side and my peace partner on the other… we are journeying to the big island and all is well… the pilot comes on after we hear the familiar ding to fasten our seatbelts saying that we are going down… in that instant, the plane nosedives and we are plunging into a watery grave… the moment i heard the pilot’s solemn voice i knew he was telling us we were all going to die and i feel the most grounded peace that passeth all understanding along with equanimity, love and gratitude flowing into every cell of my body/our one body as i reach out my hands to my co-hearts in this moment of surrender to what is and in that very instant, the plane is lifted by a thousand invisible wings and we glide into a smooth landing into paradise…

ah, what bliss is this moment of being awakened love, peace, joy, equanimity and harmony… ah, the sacred space of being radiant love… may we all luxuriate in the joy in the deep core of being always bubbling underground no matter how chaotic life is aboveground…

  in this wild and precious moment under the waning moon of the cosmic womb, the navigating the journey moon, let’s anchor this moment as creativity creating creation setting our compass and contemplating the map we’ll draw for this moon journey…

how will we nurture creativity?

what will we focus on creating?

what will we be/do to deepen and heighten soulful creation?

let us close this gathering by coming together to wage peace for all our relatives on mama gaia…

we call all noble hearts to find within the divine light of love knowing the soul is always shining…
may this light … expand on the earth showering her face with peace and harmony…
may this light … calm and harmonize the black shadow of war, violence, hate and disharmony .
may this light … fill the hearts of all relatives…

we wash away the cries of the distressed, the blood of the victims of violence, the pain of the one family we are… may they be replaced by the innocent laughter of children, the ideals of youth and the wisdom of life of our elders.
may we no longer know the signs of strife or hear birds singing sorrows, nor watch clouds stained with blood, nor feel breezes intense with heat, nor see rivers swollen by the mountains’ tears that new bonds of unity and peace are formed through our invocation together… may we all come into a deeper and more expansive knowing of who we truly are… slowed down sound and light waves in a sea of love energy, the ocean of being, the flowering field of interconnection and may we take this extraordinary moment to do the deep work of radical (rooted) change by plugging into the taproot/umbilical cord in the core of our interbeing and aligning our antennae with the source antenna… blessed bee…

on the second anniversary of George Floyd’s murder and the day after a horrific school shooting, We’re Feeling the Loss – Singing today for the Unheard… listen, listen, listen for our heartsong; we will never forget you, we will never forsake you…

“It’s my face man
I didn’t do nothing serious man
please
please
please I can’t breathe
please man
please somebody
please man
I can’t breathe
I can’t breathe
please
(inaudible)
man can’t breathe, my face
just get up
I can’t breathe
please (inaudible)
I can’t breathe sh*t
I will
I can’t move
mama
mama
I can’t
my knee
my nuts
I’m through
I’m through
I’m claustrophobic
my stomach hurt
my neck hurts
everything hurts
some water or something
please
please
I can’t breathe officer
don’t kill me
they gon’ kill me man
come on man
I cannot breathe
I cannot breathe
they gon’ kill me
they gon’ kill me
I can’t breathe
I can’t breathe
please sir
please
please
please I can’t breathe”

~ George Floyd’s Last Words ~

yes, we are feeling the loss… as people of the world, we grieve the tragic loss of another life at the hands of police and more children at the hands of a child… we stand in commonunity with everyone who is hurting. and call for an end to killing for each one is a wound to the heart of all our relatives and a shameful, indelible mark…

some more singing from the late and great poet/pilgrim on a journey, Langston Hughes…

~

Let America Be America Again

“Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed — Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”) Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek — And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one’s own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean — Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That’s made America the land it has become. O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home — For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore, And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came To build a “homeland of the free.” The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we’ve dreamed And all the songs we’ve sung And all the hopes we’ve held And all the flags we’ve hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay — Except the dream that’s almost dead today. O, let America be America again — The land that never has been yet — And yet must be–the land where every man is free. The land that’s mine — the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME — Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose — The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath — America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain — All, all the stretch of these great green states — And make America again!”

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on April 14, 1967 in a speech at Stanford University titled “The Other America,” Dr. King addresses race, poverty and economic justice and speaks to the language of the unheard in the following quotation from the much longer speech…

“Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”

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may we take this extraordinary moment and grieve the loss of so many by singing and co-creating a cosmos of compassion and peace built on justice and guided by love…