I just went on it to try to get the photo of tornado damage from 1967 that was in the paper. I mention it in my pages, as I was standing right behind the photographer as he took it.
Well, I found whole sites about the tornado and memories of it from those near and far from it, but not that photo. But now I think I will get it one way or another.
On these sites I found out that 33 people died and the tornado was ranked an F-4, a little above my more conservative guess, especially of the casualties.
It is a bit surreal to hear of others in that moment in time.
No matter your religious, racial, ethnic or philosophical beliefs and lifestyle, ancestors or your group, even Native Americans, have fought to save the nation.
Now that is something, given all the talk that so many of us do not deserve the gifts and responsibilities of our country for one viewpoint or another. And yes, many pacifist served during wartime as medics. They were the first to be called when you got hit and sometimes died on their way to you or your father, or grandfather.
Imagine that a headache, or that apathy, or ambivalence, or lack of desire or motivation for whatever reason, has some of us sit out our chances to have a say. To vote, even if it is to help move the nation one molecule towards where we feel it should be. Many lives were and are being lost, just to give each of us that chance, and we seem to be losing it.
We better make sure voting counts and leaves a trail to reality and not manipulation.
Imagine. There are traditional interest that hope for low voter turnout; some hope rural voters don’t turn out and others that city voters stay home. In recent elections, we have votes unverifiable, some interest interested in stopping those living here, in a democracy, from voting.
At the local level, some bond and other special issues that do not pass during “major” elections, are passed on off prime time elections, because they rely on the low turnout, presumably the bond issues supporters getting their say in. I sometimes am for these issues, but that does not make the low turnout right!
WE TRUSTED YOU WERE NOT COMING!
How can it even be that when you go to vote there are not enough machines or ballots? Imagine, that is not likely just an oversight. One party or interest is benefiting from the turn away by frustration, or questionable provisional ballots. Is this what we have let democracy devolve into? I have seen ballots of mine in the past, where there is not a straight line to the candidates box or oval. How can that be? You still might have to double check just to be kinda certain the mark is at your choice.
Does it cost too much in ink to have a line go to the right spot? Imagine, that is no accident, unless we are being ruled by complete idiots and fools. Oops! Wrong suggestion! One thing one can always count on when it comes to tripping elections; opportunist are clever and often manipulate below the radar.
BUT IT IS SUCH A BOTHER!
Imagine it! “I’m not going to stand in line to vote for any of these jerks!” Or. “I just got my hair done and am not going out in the rain! It would make it curl!” I hope we cannot imagine these things as reasons to let predators take over the leftovers of our Democracy, picking over the lives of all who gave their all for our privilege to be here and have a say.
Take your chance. Say it! Don’t imagine it. Or that is what we will be left with–an imaginary democracy.
It is amazing the narrative often advanced by some egos; that they will change things forever, leave their mark.
Reality Context Check
As long as we live on earth, our days are numbered, not just yours, but everyone’s. Marks and making differences of many sorts will be incinerated, and like the dinosaurs, the future will be irrelevant for our efforts. This points to a vital necessity of now.
Now, if we become a space faring civilization, a lot of what I said changes for a very long time. Even at below light speed travel, it is not long in prior adult concept terms, that our whole galaxy is populated by us. The thing of that is, even with our limited speculative abilities on such long term scenarios, we will have evolved into those space aliens so many science fiction fantasies are based on (but not necessarily always mean and dominating). But always being, in each own way, dependent upon now for everything real.
If we manage to retreat scientifically, and not move off into our outer worlds, we will face both the annihilation potentials of this one; both cosmic and human made. In that case some projections have us not around all that much longer in earth time terms. All your achievements, your doing it for yourself, or your family, or some other legacy, all likely rendered mute in days to come.
WHEN NOW IS THEN
I believe all now’s are always connected, so I have been a bit misleading about everything being obliterated if you do not think like I do. But it will one day (day on earth time terms) when it will be right now 2 billion years from now, just as easily as we are 2 billion years from some time ago, and it from the one before. It was easy was it not? For here you are in your instant of life. Oh, you will be gone in the blink of an eye. That is assured.
Philosophically, in our belief systems, it seems prudent to treasure the past, and if we do so treasure our ancestors, this wonderful planet and our abilities to explore further, we must leave that door wide open to space exploration, and not retreat from the greater mission we are potentated with for the thrill of discovery and challenge, if not the Will of the Divine.
It is always this now, this wave crest we ride. Each thought and action changes the ripples, influences the Whole. I have no doubt in this.
But for now, whenever you can, take a look at all the Love that is around you; the privilege to Be, in effect, a chosen one, the awesome responsibility to focus on what we will, the ability to let go of hostilities and embrace giving unconditionally, whenever I so will. That is the Divine connection to now. We are endowed with a certain image of It. To deny It and try being It ourselves is Its most challenging gift. What a giving Creation this is to allow this freedom to imagine, even falsely, who and what we each are.
I trust we are up to this challenge given to us. Each entitled to see through illusion or not. Each entitled to live free or not. Each entitled to embrace Truth and Love, or not. In any of these and countless more ways, it is Now that makes the difference.
Photo from back yard.
Now I must go shopping for construction materials to finish making a “permanent” masonry wall, that will one day fall. But be filled with definition of all now present in-between.
It told how several left evangelicals are aiding and abetting the poor and sick, which the individual declares is wrong, since they are that way BECAUSE OF SIN!
That is a new one to me. And I may not represent it perfectly!
I have heard that the religious right had turned Christ message on its head, but it is shocking to see it so nakedly claimed. Perhaps John Deans book; CONSERVATIVES WITHOUT CONSCIENCE, would help some break through the cult stranglehold. I would suggest the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, but those seem to have become an anti example.
Many old tribal cults and new age cults beliefs have this; problems are all your fault! What have you done to deserve them? Now you are subservient to the finger pointing at you expert. Who prescribes ideas to ostensibly heal your wicked ways.
Hint.
Since you are not perfect to your beliefs, especially since you, your family and friends will get sick, even die one day, you must forever tow the ideological lines fear based premise. If your child is born with leukemia, exactly whose fault was that? Or is born poor in Appalachia? Does God make the habit of punishing the unborn for where they will be born or to whom?
I am not saying my decisions cannot lead to both a kind of punishment and illness. I am saying it is insane to believe the Universes Infallible Being would hold us up to Its standard, or condemn us forever for making a mistake, or accepting a wrong idea. We are human, right? Or are some of us the one and only God?
JUST SAY NO TO GOOD WORKS?
I helped clean up in the vicinity of a tornadoes path way back when. Did all the sinners happen to be in that line? Was I not to help? I volunteered for domestic abuse response. Is that a sin? Is that why I have a headache?
It was a profound experience in my life; helping those left helpless, joining with other volunteers to help those without a reason why, unconditionally.
When we seemingly came out of nowhere, not to proselytize but just to do unto others as we would wish to ourselves, a wonderful Spirit was present. I could imagine that having a profound impact on them (sinners?), as we did what they were unable to do alone. If evangelicals are to think this is taking Christ message wrong, shame on them.
CULTS OF A DIFFERENT FEATHER
I will tell these evangelicals of the right this; how dare you stab helping, compassion and empathy, (qualities of Christ), in the back! I missed it when He helped the poor, made extra loaves and fishes, walked amidst the sick. I missed it when he callously wagged his fingers at them and said they deserved what they got, for being sinners. Someone must be rewriting something opposite for new reasons. Reasons that will be blind to blind followers.
Tribal cults, new age cults, and apparently some evangelical cults, believe they are entitled to judge as if they were God, or knew of Gods hand. One is then left as the cult members are. Never good enough (Oh I have a cough! Hide it.). Never pure enough (Oh. I had an accident, I am being punished!) maybe, but was the “sin” moral or of merit? (We have a drought, so lets sacrifice a virgin, to appease god.) Or was the message; watch were you are going? Or that car just came through the light and hit me out of the blue? Do all objects collied for moral reasons, religious virtue?
See how confused you can be kept when under mind control? You become unable to think for yourself in any rationally objective way. Well you got sick because of a sin and I am here to tell you not to sin and so be well. Will you accept Christ and be healed? Oh, one year old with a fatal illness?
Cults (yep, I was in one once) will also use the negative, as a positive, it is a test of your faith, or it came to you because you were strong enough to handle it. This is not so unlike the compassion one is extended when you are told, Christ needed your one year old in heaven. They are in a better place. (There is a point where ‘mysterious ways’ are nothing more than cold blooded rationalizations for having no insight left.)
But if they (victims) got there by the sinister force alleged by some evangelicals, that better place may well be because they are away from you, or is it them?
CULT GROUP THINK CONFORMITY OF IDEA
I can see why a cult wishes you both directing scorn and retribution towards your inner failures of belief; but that they would project them out into the world, for what seems like demented or politically callus reasons, proudly, and over their vast multimedia platforms, is quite a black magic art.
I love it that there are children praying for the unborn. I am not about denying true love and powerful feelings for defending the most innocent amongst us.
Since the issue is one that crosses that line of individual rights, and effectively places blame on one sex, it is essential to have both perspective and context. Without them, the most well meaning of intentions, the most heartfelt compassion’s, even the desire to serve your God as best you can to care for Creation; all these can fall prey to manipulation and deception. This too, is beyond question.
SO WHAT IS MY ALLEGED TRUTH ON THIS TOPIC?
The usual; context. In many instances context is everything. It can make assumed unquestionable truths, out to be lies. It can prove the way to heaven to be the path to hell, brimming with good intentions. The issue is then about responsibility of all parties and sides of the debate. For some time a movement has been afoot to make this distinction over abortion to be one of the right to life verses the right to choose.
On the surface, it seems unconscionable, akin to evil, to think ones right to choose has precedent over a new souls right to choose. There is something callus about the distinction; a right to terminate a potential person, they never having a chance to even exercise that same right. Here is where distinctions can seem black and white, without much thinking for some to know which side is on the side of right and truth, and what is holy. These grounds can be in reality, quicksand.
THE BIGGER QUESTION OF CONTEXT
What is there to debate about, to muse over morally or spiritually, when innocence is so clearly in one quarter?
This is a question I am afraid some never ask, there is no search for objectivity; you are for life or against it; you are for a woman’s right to chose or against it. Black and white is comfortable place to be in ones own mind. I am right and you are wrong. I am on Gods side and you have been seduced by Satan. My church leader, my feminist friend or group, whomever, is unquestionably with me on this. Could be that you are evil in my view because you let the government right in to my decisions on my body. To some, this seems a spiritual responsibility to ones right to be in charge of their own spiritual merit, a self evident spiritual imperative.
OK then. Both sides have their angle, both can have contempt for the other. Both can claim extreme position over someone else’s life and declare no one has a right to think or act otherwise, but what is wise?
CONTEXT INCLUDES HISTORY; RELIGIOUS, SECULAR, AND EVEN OLDER TRIBAL BEHAVIORS SURROUNDING BIRTH AND LIFE.
That complicates things.
Black and white wish no shades of gray and ambiguity. They see that as either confusion or the other sides manipulation. It can have aspects of both those qualities for sure, it also can be the honest truth. Honest truth however, particularly if it leads to unresolved questions, is often not what religion nor politics are about. They are often about distinctions that determine that others are opposite you. Often this is implied to be against you. You may now be dependent on that sure authority for your own point of view. You may be in the above categories and attached to them in a dependency relationship that does not leave you honestly free to make up your own mind.
This kind of trap any of us can get into in various aspects of our lives. It can make us angry; we seem dependent on something someone else says is true yet we go along, pulled on strings of loyalty, duty, maybe trust, and they all can put us out on a limb. We can be uncomfortable about that. We can resent that. We can blame the others who believe differently for putting us in this precarious position inside our own identities. This can be the precise place manipulators of “wedge issues” wish you to be; you are angry, made dependent on them, and must reject any notions of gray or ambiguity, in effect, possibly placing you at odds with ultimate truth.
HISTORY OH HISTORY———-WHY HAS YOUR CONTEXT FORSAKEN ME
Some of the current abortion argument has to put itself in a very small box to be valid, cynically, that box is to stay formed long enough to become the ballot box. Concepts and context have to be trimmed down and highly emotionalized to make this happen. The most relevant concepts usually in the debate are individual and societal responsibility, when a life “begins”, and who has the right to say or do anything about ending life. The abortion argument is usually truncated to just apply to a pregnant woman, that is the only life and innocence to be considered.
Is it really? Can we cut away all of history and behavior, all of life and context, all of death and mans inhumanity to men, women and children, and assume God or government can isolate a pregnant women from all these proceeding issues? Only in most ignorant and stone-like abstraction.
-
Usually religious leaders and followers interpret most environmental events to be acts of God, often assuming some lesson, as a blessing or a curse, is being offered to be seen and felt. Modern people still sense some things this way as did the most “primitive” tribal peoples. For some tribes, a newborn is exposed to extreme danger for a fundamental reason in their cosmology; this is how we (particular tribe) survive under life’s conditions. I cannot say that is not Gods will to them. Cultural relativism is a gray area in human relationship. We can be certain other are wrong by our standards, and assume we are superior at understanding Life. This is a human right to disagree with how wrong others are, but it does not guarantee in each and every instance, that I am right.
I was first shocked at this older cultural relativism, it doesn’t fit perfectly with the modern day view of things. Just two examples that stuck in my mind were; I believe it was a tribe in Africa that put the newborn to (in my words) a “God test.” The child is placed on its own somewhere where a herd of animals if guided toward and past it. If the child lived, God had approved. (This is an after birth abortion, something the abortion issue must cut away from argument, for it would open a whole can of confusion over deaths occurring after birth by the actions of any of us.) Another tribe, I believe was in the southwest US region (if I remember this exactly), exposed a newborn to a scorpion bite, another kind of God test. They have to do this, because the scorpions were a main source of protein that they could not seemingly survive without. The presence of these scorpions in their life necessitated the building of immunity to their sting.
Both of my recalled examples above required mothers and fathers to face a horrible but necessary fact of existence, the former I believe being ordained by population pressure (if too many children are raised the environment could not support them, leaving the whole people at risk of disease, conflict and starvation), and the latter, by the reality of food and survival in that respect. Once again, the abortion issue, to arouse passions and elicit votes and followers, along with a purified sense of innocence, must cut away these seemingly ordained deaths from consideration, further boxing in their conviction.
WHERE DOES LIFE BEGIN? WHERE DOES ABORTION BEGIN?
Have I confused you at all? Do not be about this. I still hate abortions. I also kinda hate it that one day I will die, and I currently never know when! More oddly, if I was aborted by any of the above means near conception an birth, I would not have worries or bothers about it. I trust in Gods power, period.
We must make some assumptions about God when we defend innocence by demanding an end to all abortion. We must assume, in the ways of non believers, that our God is controlled by us! That if my mother fell and miscarried me, my soul would have no way of getting here. That seems awfully presumptuous about Gods limited abilities. It is said that 20%-%50% of all pregnancies are spontaneously aborted. If one believes in God, for some reason (do you have it?) God must abort up to half of us before birth. We all came quite close to God test abortion!
Then there are Bible stories of God speaking directly to people, (as many preacher today lay claim) even asking them to kill their newborn. How do I know God is unable to speak to a woman this way? How can I limit Gods power and intentions over life in her intimate care? I can if I am a blinded follower and have unplugged my God given, truth verifying critical thinking abilities, aborted them and had someones else’s inserted in over my own insecurities and uncertainty. Yea. Then I would be sure as black and white. Ready to throw the stones.
What if some of these reasons are man-made? What if mom smoking raised the risk of miscarriage, or something some company put into a lake or stream? Are these then like those tribal abortions? Human caused due to environmental issues? Or should we expand the right to life movement to hold all individuals and companies responsible that negatively impact the environment? Why not?
What about other human decisions that result in pregnancy? Why do we not interfere with them because they cause the termination of potential new innocent lives? Some conservative religions have the woman having no right to refuse the man. The man then presumed to act on Gods behalf. Are men guilty of abortion then, when they do not have sex with a woman they desire for some reason, even some strange woman walking down the street? Why not? They are preventing a new innocent life.
We can say the same about war and the death penalty. They stop men and women from both perhaps knowing God and doing Gods work on earth and having children. Once again, more lives terminated by human decisions, more lives aborted. Why do such questions never make it to the marketplace of ideas and issues as truths in the pro-life, or anti-life (from one angle) debate? Gray and ambiguity, a completely natural human reality check condition, yet not allowable in the isolation and alienation of abstraction based beliefs opponents need to boost their cause for whatever reason, known or unknowable but to themselves.
The argument on abortion would have us seem to believe, in its most emotionalized states, that some of us are for abortions as if we enjoy killing innocence and shoving it into Gods chosen ones face. While others think a woman’s so called right to chose seems to bear no weight of heavy and perhaps lasting responsibility, that may haunt her the rest of her life.
TRUTH CAN HURT
We also have ignored one fact that has always remained behind curtains, and in back alleys, and bathrooms, in this argument like it or not, all the laws you want to make or not. There will be girls and women who will be unable to bear a child for physical or psychological reasons. They will, and there is a long and tortured history of this, carry out an abortion on their own if they feel they must.
What weigh do we then bare, if they both die? What part have we, we men or the self righteous concerned for innocence, then played into these two aborted lives and the lives that may have followed. Is that not even more innocence kept from flowering? Is it easy for us to compartmentalize these further tragedies as not of our doing with no responsibility? That is quite a sophist trick if you can.
THIS IS WHY I HATE ABORTIONS
Why? I hate the situation. I despise the alienation of the girls and women, and especially the social network and culture they are in. I wish these lives would make it. I wish I could make a woman sure her parents would not kill her, or her boyfriend. I wish she did not think a child brought such a curse to her future. I wish she was not tricked and or raped. I wish innocence had a chance and there was thorough sex education for all. That all the presumed evil, manipulations and perversions alleged about sex would fall under the light of truth. I am angry as hell about it all, with all the deceptions that hide under a presumed sanctified and righteous cause.
I am angry that manipulators use ignorance for their own personal, religious and political gain, and do this in the name of God and innocence. I despise how their deception enlist honest and well meaning faithful souls to their cause, to cleave society rather than bring the connection of whole truth to bare. I despise them, yet understand their own innocence lost, that some persecution of some kind is likely an open wound in their hearts. I hate how some on the left think some right is clear and unquestionable. Do they want to know what that person and their family are really going through?
And so called conservatives or “family values” voters; while they seek to prevent education, while they promote alienation and division, while they blame those in a most horrible self turmoil over their decisions and fate, they claim to defend innocence in Gods name. I hate how that Name is thus taken in vain under a dark shadow of ignorance. Now it will be used to one political interest or others right of judgement. I do hate abortion!
But I will be no ones fool, in the name of God.
It is in this amazing privilege to discover Creation and try to succeed in our desires, with and in and through the worlds of others, we are able to know and grow closer to real truth and understanding.
We can make a difference and be honest while doing so.
———————————————————
I put this video in to show how those seeking to make abortion illegal, have not thought about the women who would have illegal abortions. They did not think about it for they are likely being “used” by political interest to polarize society into us and them’s. The horror of abortion is abstracted into a true and false. The correct answer was assumed to be the answer. As these folks seem to demonstrate; The answer seems absent. Our emotions and care can be used agasint us in the name of morals or God.
At times I accompany a friend who is a hospice volunteer, to her regular visit to the survivor of a family. This old guys health is deteriorating and he wonders why he still lives.
He and his wife retired to the southwest over 25 years ago. He went on to work as a nurse or hospital aid for some years. His wife had a severe stroke and he became her loyal and unwavering caretaker for many years. He is quite a character, very opinionated and a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge. He was wounded there and spent some time in a French hospital during the war.
He feels that the old like him, the poor and many others are ignored because they are off the rich and powerful radar. He feels the US system is rigged and most politics is mostly tricks.
That aside, he is faced with no longer being able to live in his mobile home park. He has one niece who lives states away and an even older sister who just moved into a old folks home states away. The VA provides him with some medical help but mostly he is a living artifact that cannot make ends meet in the modern world. Many are in this situation.
He cannot make it into the nearby inexpensive assisted living home until there is an opening. Contingent on this is he would have to sell his home to have enough to make the move. Being barely able to walk, most moving presents a huge obstacle to him. He was ambiguously looking forward to moving, being that he likes his independence, yet must face the reality that he may at any time be incapacitated. So he sits on his couch in this limbo, waiting for something to change but feeling trapped in more ways than one.
(He has many hand gestures. His fingers flick out on the right hand to demonstrate he is an informed man of action, for a photo where his reading materials are all about.)
We help him all we can but there are limitations for us, given gas cost and distance to aiding him.
So here is the deal. We as a culture leave the very ones who saved our common freedom to languish in uncertainty and a profound sense of abandonment because we are a heartless and self centered people, or for some reasons, the plight of the needy are kept out of the big picture. Remember Katrina?
With elections coming, I would urge anyone who can to remember those who have served this country to not forget we live from their service to us. Remember them more than shooting some rifles off at their funeral. Remember that others, as well, are unwanted, have made mistakes, some of which they have not recovered or redeemed themselves from. They are still human beings. Each of our own humanity is defined on how the least of us are treated by the rest. We are each that rest.
There is the unfortunate tendency in this modern world for short attention spans. The “top ten list” of things to think about has been shifted to individualistic “responsibility”, bypassing or subverting the truth that there is a commons, there are common responsibilities, and not only when rich companies get into trouble here or from their policies overseas. Much of the worlds interest, which we all are are part of, must be on the radar.
If I ignore the issues facing human beings in my home or my world, it is darkness that becomes self perpetuating. The light only comes out into view when our hearts are allowed to look, that seeing is illumination.
