"As With Most Men"

As with most men, it is easier for me to give hugs than to accept them,
Let the truth be known that men are nothing more than emotional skyscrapers,
built with glass infrastructures, spray painted the color of steel and nicknamed "Strength"

Strange, isn't it?

What walking contradictions are we called men...

Men are taught to colonize at the age of 5 through games like cops and robbers,
cowboys and indians
At the age of 8 we are given helmets and told to hit each other on the head with it,
Bleed but do not bleed,
Cut but do not cry,
Be a man, join the military,
Die for your country, and if death comes to you,
Look it in the eye and say:
Bring it on, mother-fucker, I fear nothing but intimacy.

When it comes to intimacy men quiver like fault lines, crumble like cities

What walking contradictions are we called men...

Men sign peace accords while abusing their wives,
Accept the Nobel Peace prizes while reducing health care,
Pledge to rid the world of terrorism while simultaneously denying government aid to any country that defends a woman's right to choose

During the 1970's the US government forcebly sterilized an estimated fifty percent
of the indigenous population of America's Mid-West telling them the process was reversible

Can you say biological terrorism?

In a global war against terror, maybe testosterone is the real terrorist
And if so, how many of these Star Spangled singing, flag waving citizens would
continue to do so If terror was not racialized, but gendered?

Would the US military turn its guns on itself for a sex trap across Southeast
Asia, Africa and the Americas?
Would MTV be firebombed for its subjectification, hyper-sexualization of our women of colored bodies?
Would we stop looking towards the muslim world for misogyny and instead
turn our sights to Madrid, Montreal, New York, Los Angeles?

And I understand my sisters when they say every woman has a story that's been told a maxim of one soul, maybe less
And that is why you'll never hear me call a woman slut, bitch or a dyke,
No matter what she does, because I do not blame her
I blame the men who have emotionally and physically raped her,
I blame these corporations whose images tell them they hate her,
And I put my arms on her shoulder and tell her how great to life and
to God that SHE created her

Men, take note, this is how you give love,
This is how you receive hugs.
Press flesh to flesh till breast crumple,
Like emotional origamy.

- Mark Gonzales

Courage

"It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are."

-e.e. cummings

Exchanging Notes

"In Eastern wisdom traditions we have a saying that th sinner and the saint are merely exchanging notes. The sinner has a future and the saint has a past in which their roles are reversed. Forbidden lust and unconditional love are two sides of the same coin. You can't have a coin without a head and a tail, or an electrical current without a positive and negative terminal."

-Deepak Chopra, The Shadow Effect, pp 30

Our Mother

Our Mother, who art within us,
We celebrate your many names.
Your widom come. Your will be done,
Unfolding from the depths within us.

Each day you give us all that we need.
You remind us of our limts and we let go.
You support us in our power and we act with courage.

For you are the dwlling place within us,
the empowerment around us, and the celebration among us.
As it was in the very beginning, may it be now.

- Patricia Lynn Reilly, Words Made Flesh

Only When...

"It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any self-deception or illusion, hat a light will develop out of events, by which the path to success may be recognized."

-I Ching

Eat Money?

"Only when the last tree has died
and the last river has been poisoned
and the last fish has been caught
will we realize we cannot eat money."

- based on Cree saying

Forgiveness

"It's not enough that we forgive a few people; we must try our best to forgive everyone, for only love is real. If I withhold it from anyone, then I withhold it from myself. And it's not enough to love only when it's easy; we must try to expand our capacity to love even when it's hard."

-Marianne Williamson, The Shadow Effect, pp 156-157

(Note - I will say that forgiving and loving someone does not mean that that person has to be in your life when they are continually abusive. In fact, I'd say it is nearly impossible to love and/or forgive someone who constantly abuses you. But I try to forgive and wish someone well after closing that door so that the abuse can not longer occur. An abuser will continue to abuse you as long as you let them. And by letting them, I don't mean that you as the victim deserve the abuse. But unless you terminate the relationship, it will continue. So, sometimes the only way to love and to forgive, is to terminate a relationship and move on with your life.)

How to Love

"God's love both dwells within us and extends out from us every moment of every day. When e are living in alignment with our true selves as God created us, we receive love constantly and then extend it outward as we have received it. That is what it means to live in the light.

Yet as commonsensical as this sounds, it does not feel like common sense when someone has behaved in a way that seems undeserving of our love. At such a moment, extending our love to that person feels like the wrong thing to do, and withholding our love feels right. That tiny moment - that little bit of unloving thought that seems like just a tiny thing, just reasonable judgment - is the root of all evil. It is the cornerstone of the shadow's thought system, for it involves a separation from God and a casting of blame. God never withholds love, and we achieve sanity by learning to love as God loves.

Our task, if we are to cast out the shadow, is to learn to think only immortal thoughts, even though we live on the mortal plane. Our higher thought forms will lift the frequency of the planet, and the world will then transform.

But what about now? What makes us forget who we are, thus turning off the light and splitting the world into two separate states - love and fear? It is one thought: that someone s guilty. How we deal with human imperfection is the essential question that decides whether we dwell in the shadow or in light.

God does not look at a person who has made a mistake the same way we do. God does not seek to punish us when we have made mistakes, but to correct us. When we return to our right minds, loving unconditionally and unwaveringly, then the world itself will self-correct.


-Marianne Williamson, The Shadow Effect, p 148

If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad

"[As] long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people. But when it comes time to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls be murdered, you haven't got no blood.

You bleed when the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite; and you bark when the white man says bark. I hate to say this about us, but it's true.

How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi, as violent as you were in Korea? How can you justify being nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama, when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered, and at the same time you're going to violent with Hitler, and Tojo, and somebody else that you don't even know?

If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad.

If it's wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it's wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country."

-Malcolm X, “Message To The Grass Roots” (1963).

A Valentine

A Valentine from one of my dearest friends...so beautiful I thought I would share it with all...

Dear Friends how does your Garden of love grow? I know that all of us do not have the same destiny when it comes to romance with one that you find in your journey in life. All I know is that love is a diamond of many facets, facets that gleam and shine in our hearts form the different loves that came our way, whether they are among the living or in memory inside of us. On this Valentine weekend whether we have a Valentine or not, to be with, we must know that we are in love with life.

Even if it gets so challenging with stones down the road, we must know how strong our love is, how valuable we are a gem stone..harder than any other stone that can get in our way. Even if it is only one person alive that loves us.. even if that person alive, is ones self.

-Tali Salazar Viñas

Reality

The world in which you were born is just one model of reality.

Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you: the are unique manifestations of the human spirit.

- Wade Davis

"You cannot be who you really want to be unless yor brain works right."

-Daniel G. Amen, MD Change your Brain Change your Life, p 1

almost anybody can learn

A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or
believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being
can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know,
you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight;
and never stop fighting.
As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder
than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as
easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time – and whenver we do it, we are not poets.
If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something
easy, like learning how to blow up the world — unless you’re not only willing, but glad,
to feel and work and fight till you die.
Does this sound dismal? It isn’t.
It’s the most wonderful life on earth.
Or so I feel.

– e. e. cummings

Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand

"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others."

Frederick Douglass, 1857

All is Seasonal, not harsh

"Elevate not the beginning. Despise not the ending.
All is seasonal, not harsh.
Honor coming and going, holding on and letting go,
joy and sorry, reunion and separation.

Hold onto nothing. Participate in everything.
Notice all that is and bless it, as it shifts and changes in a moment.
A full emptiness, unfolding from the center-
always new, always now, always and not yet, always and never."

- Patricia Lynn Reilly, Words Made Flesh

"I love my country but I think we should start seeing other people."

- Unknown

Ain't I a Woman?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ar'n't I a woman?
Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman?

I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman?

I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right side up again!

And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

-Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?” (1851).

Teaching Children to accept their Shadow

"If children were taught to become aware of their shadow, sharing even dark feelings forgiving themselves for not being "good" all the time, learning how to release shadow impulses through healthy outlets, then there would be much less damange to society and the ecosystem."

-Deepak Chopra, The Shadow Effect, p 26

"I'd rather be whole than good."

- C.G. Jung