After the last 8 years of the previous administration and what some are referring to as a somewhat stilted if not shaky start to the new administration, maybe it would be a good idea to have a slight High School Civics refresher.
Let's start with the purpose of today, it is the celebration of the July 4th, 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence which formalized the resolution of Independence that had been approved two days earlier.
While the American Declaration of Independence was not the first such declaration ever made, it was to signal the start of the systemic failure of European Colonialism in many aspects.
On this day, most American think of fireworks, bar-b-ques and if you are a little older, John Phillips Sousa marches. I tend to think of the fact that this day was the beginning of a long and sometime excruciatingly bloody trek that would eventually bring us to where we are today.
So on this day where we celebrate our Independence and many also think of their freedoms, enjoy and take just a moment to ponder this great experiment in history called Democracy and appreciate it before it disappears through neglect.
One of my co-workers has a bumper sticker that sums it up so nicely (even though it refers to the Constitution instead)
I would rather have someone burn the flag and wrap themselves in the Constitution, than to burn the Constitution and wrap themselves in the flag.
I recently signed up with Twitter and have made about 80 updates so far. You can click below if you want to check my tweets out... (God, talk about sounding gay...)
I had a few minutes today of calm during an otherwise crazed day of dispatching and was looking over my list of tweets and it got me to wondering...
When I first heard about Twitter, I was told that what made it so interesting was the fact that by being so short, only 140 characters, that people would have mini-blog entries and that the small size and ease of entry would give people an insight to the aspects of people that they don't usually get to see.
Looking through mine, I find some that are really interesting insights into things, my collections of interesting things overheard throughout my day and/or life and sometimes my slightly wicked sense of humor shows up (irreverence has been a calling card of mine for quite a while...).
One of the people that I list on my website as a teacher is Joyce Meyer, to be honest, I have kind of fallen out of like with her... Since she changed the show from "Life in the Word" to whatever it is now, she has lost that down-home feeling I loved and started taking herself to seriously as a "TV Evangelist." Bummer...
Several years ago she made a comment that really struck home with me that most Ministers (remember the source) tend to only show one side of themselves to the public, hiding that which is not befitting one in their position.
I decided then to make a concerted effort that in whatever I do, I would just lay things out there and no matter what the cost was, just be who and what I am. It has not always been well received, but I have found that Dr. Seuss was right when he said:
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
which is why I have it on my blog. I would think to do anything less would be nothing short of hypocritical and completely at odds with what I teach my students. How can one take responsibility for everything that happens to them if they won't even accept themselves for all of the facets of the jewel they have made?
So, when you read my tweets, judge if you must, but realize that no matter what I might write (I admit it can go off the deep end on occasion) it is a small snapshot of a momentary state of mind. Many of them are just little blurbs of random moments, I kind of look forward to seeing how they change in time...
Catch the nuggets of insight and/or spirit when they appear, try to appreciate the comedic lines and understand that even at 44 years of age, for the most part, I still find this existence to be a fascinating place and I go to such amazing places in my head... 140 characters probably does not do it justice but with enough pieces, you can get a pretty good idea just what I "is" in my totality.
Warning: The following contains some language that may offend some...
It's officially Gay Pride Sunday in Los Angeles... The festivities are in full swing and the parade starts in about 10 hours and I am going with a group of wonderful friends.
But as much as I enjoy Gay Pride, there are two aspects of it that really yank my chain.
I've never exactly understood what it is that I am supposed to be so proud of. To me, being gay is like being Caucasian, it's just who and what I am.
I'm not proud of being 5'8" (172 cm), I'm not proud of naturally blond hair (though it's now turning grey/silver) and I'm definitely not proud of a genetic tendency to be short and stocky... If I'm not proud of those genetic traits, why should I be proud of the one that makes me gay?
Those who think it is some kind of choice are either too stupid to awaken to the fact they didn't choose their heterosexuality and they obviously have never been on the receiving end of one of their rants of hatred, thinly veiled behind a "philosophy" of love, you know, the hate the sin but love the sinner... Right...
To wake up one day and say to oneself, I think today, I will make myself a second class citizen, a pariah of society and unwanted by my family... If that truly were true, I would DEFINITELY be in need of a therapists help.
The simple fact is that God made me the way that I am and he shows this particular paintbrush of uniqueness all over nature, so it is only "unnatural" as far as people judge it.... Screw 'em!
Many people tell me that I should be proud of having survived everything being gay has brought into my life, while it is true they actually had a lot to do with me becoming the person I am today, but what a sucky way to go about it (guess I may be a spiritual drama queen after all).
The other aspect of Gay Pride that gets to me is that I am so not the typical fag. I cannot dance, I couldn't care less about fashion (I actually found out that Jimmy Choo is a designer and not an accent issue for "Jimmy's Shoes" from "The Devil Wears Prada") and I am completely un-color coordinated.
All the things people seem to think I should be as a gay man are completely outside my genetic makeup, I just don't have those genes...
I don't know much about them, but I like cars, I also like computers, stereos and tearing stuff apart to see how it works.
As far as sex goes, the straight-boy fantasy of the gay-sex-life is something I have NEVER really been either capable of, little less comfortable with.
I live in LA where 9's and 10's run around like crazy and I am a 40+ cute, but nothing that's going to grab your attention and lets face it, men are visually stimulated creatures.
There are times when I see the guys in the clubs and I feel like an alien visiting from another dimension since NONE of it makes any sense to me.
As much as I would love to get laid more often, like a few times a decade, I just cannot become part of the 2AM discount sale at the local gay watering hole, I can't stay up that late and I want to choose or be chosen, not stuck with as the best option left (this isn't third grade dodge ball team selection).
So, I guess I will enjoy the Pride Parade, torment a few fundies by knowing their Bibles better than they do, and celebrate that we had the courage to tell the judgemental assholes out there to just go fuck off and be what we were made to be.
The simple fact seems to be that gay or straight, we all have our issues.
I think I got the gay genes that turn into shamans and others of service to their community, kind of lonely a lot of the time, but ultimately rewarding in the long run, even when it seems futile...
I recently put the following up on my facebook page; "Are humans REALLY a viable proof of evolution? My cat seems smarter than most..."
I was specifically referring to how people believe themselves to be the ultimate form of life that exists on this planet, but is just as likely to destroy himself as to survive this adolescence our species is going though.
I think Douglas Adams put it very well when he wrote something like:
Man thinks he is the most intelligent of creatures because he has developed agriculture, civilization and cool little LED watches.
Dolphins know they are the most intelligent since they just did not worry about it.
My dad is a creationist. As I understand it, they believe that the world was literally created in 6 24-hour days approximately 6,000 years ago and that such theory should be taught in schools along with the Theory of Evolution as the source of life in this universe. I accept evolution as a process of life adapting and changing which can be seen around us to a certain degree.
It brings up 2 points for me:
When I was in school, it was technically called the "Theory of Evolution" but you would have thought it was proven law if you dared to raise anything that questioned it. Ben Stein recently discussed this in his documentary "Expelled"
The simple fact is that there is as much evidence to call the Theory of Evolution, as THE source of life, into question as tends to support it...
Many items used to prove only work to a certain degree. One example that I remember was the creatures used to show the evolution of a horse' hoof. The hooves looked convincing, but I was dismayed when the skeletons were constantly changing size and other aspects of the animals had nothing that looked related, like ribs that changed number randomly.
As much as I believe in a Creator that is outside of creation, to teach it in a science class would be questionable.
Sadly, those who are somewhat anti-religious have a perfectly valid point when they point out that there is little to no direct evidence to support or disprove a creator.
Also, since the above is somewhat true, I tend to think that such things truly due belong in a philosophy rather than a science class
So I begin to wonder if Darwin's theory, as far as Origins of life is concerned, may be disproving itself through human beings.
If we did evolve up through the species as Evolution claims, it would seem to me that we would have a more closely guarded relationship with the world around us.
As I told my dad once, my cats have enough sense to clean themselves, co-exist with their environment and not take a poo in their food dish, can we say the same about people?
We have been the indirect and sometimes direct cause of several of history's plagues though our beliefs in "dirt is from God and to wash it off would be offensive" to cats being the familiars of witches, destroy them and let the rat population grow unchecked and spread the Black Plague.
We rampage through what we KNOW to be limited resources, pollute the environment of the only place we have to live, for the time being at least, and in the name of convenience and profitability poison ourselves even if we bury our collective head into the sand like an ostrich.
So I'll ask it again, are we proof of the evolutionary origins of life or must we be something different?
There are many things about me that seem to confuse people, cope... but it does make me an "interesting" character to get to know and if there is one thing that is true, it's that I am true to what I am, no matter what... :)
One of the things that a friend used to tease me about is the fact that I have quite the video collection. Some are excellent movies that either are or are likely to become classics and a few that should though they likely won't.
One of the reasons I collect my films is that they are fun way of provoking either an emotional state for myself or they have a memory attached to them. One such collection of films are the following:
"The Wizard of Oz" The devine Judy Garland, can you believe they really wanted Shirley Temple for the role of Dorothy? Cute, but no...
"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" Other than just being fun, it was also my first introduction to Benny Hill, he played the Toy-Maker.
Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments"
"Ben Hur" Actually had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Heston back in the 80's, nice enough, shame he turned into such a dick later... Oh well.
"The Sound of Music" it won the Oscar for best film the year I was born...
The one thing that these films all have in common is that when they would be on TV when I saw a kid, my mother and I would ALWAYS watch them together so they carry some of my best memories as a kid.
Lately, I have had the song "Maria" running through my head and after a conversation I had yesterday after work,it really started to hit home...
I had a conversation with a friend about religion in general but specifically about the mistranslation of scripture and ideas from the sources into the modern day.
Now as happens in many of these conversations, his perception was that his scripture, in its original tongue, was closer to the original than any other. It's not one of those discussions I particularly love since you can either turn it into a fight or ask the obvious question of how one proves such a claim, almost always a dangerous proposition at best.
It has started to become painfully obvious to me that trying to teach be re-aligning a current system with a universal underlying philosophy is going to be an extremely difficult way to go about it. We get so caught up in our paradigms and how we relate to them.
I am going to have to start creating at least a basic structure for explaining things that can be used to explain concepts that are in all the assorted scripture but not taught or directly understood.
For example, one of the questions that I get asked a lot is why God would go to all the trouble and allow all the pain that comes in creation? I tend to agree with Neale Donald Walsch when he describes it as God knew himself (pardon the gender there) to be the totality of all that is, was or ever would be but that knowing something is totally different from experiencing it. Creation is God experiencing being that totality.
I usually ad the analogy to prove the point of this of when we were children, our mothers told us the stove was hot and this would burn us, so we knew it, but after the first time we actually touched it, it went from a piece of datum to an experience.
This in many ways is one of the easier questions.
There are so many of these questions that I tend to answer in differing ways based on what my intuition tells me will speak to the current recipient, but that's not likely to work in larger groups or when trying to write something for mass publication.
So I would ask the same questions the nuns ask in the song:
I have been a fan of this song for most of my life, but it wasn't until much later that I actually sat down and listened to the lyrics.
I think the first time was probably when it was the closing credits of "The Killing Fields" which really struck me hard. The movie exposed me to a visual representation of just how vile mankind can be to others.
The great teachers through history have all addressed this from one perspective or another, but the simple fact is that when you view yourself as a separate entity, cut off from everyone and everything else, it becomes second nature to dehumanize the "others."
I have Christian Fundamentalist friends who call me a "New Ager" for discussing the union of all living souls, but if they would actually look at their scripture, they would find out that Jesus used it as a fundamental paradigm in his teachings, in other words, there is nothing new about it.
One example that comes to mind is when Jesus addresses the disciples in Matthew 25:40, telling them:
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Now to many this is not going to prove anything to them as far as unity of all creatures, but if nothing else it points to the idea that dehumanizing ANYONE, especially the least of these, is in opposition to what Jesus was teaching.
I sometimes wonder about what it is going to take to waken the vast majority to its actual in-humanness in its actions toward the rest of the people in this world. We seem to be pre-programmed to separate and tag anything and everything into groups and those other than ours are to be invalidated. We have a cultural perspective that says Hitler was terrible, but other than the numbers game, are the majority of us really any better?
Be it gender, race, religion, orientation, nationality, et al the simple fact is that there is only one race of (semi) intelligent beings on this planet and that race is human, aka homo sapiens.
Those who have read the mini biography on my website are aware of the "Great Experiment" and some of the interesting things that became apparent.
Start with being aware that whenever you judge someone else, what you are really doing is judging some aspect of yourself that you may or may not like, depends on the judgement.
Start relating to the world around you as if there was no difference between "them" and "you."
Become aware of the eternal part of yourself and start relating to things from it's perspective and you will no longer have to imagine a better reality, you will have taken the first steps at creating it.
All views presented here are those of the presenter or commentator only. No liability is assumed by Spiritgeek, though uselessly offensive and obviously slanderous content will be removed as soon as I find it.
The purpose of this blog is to document life lessons and insights as they come in and in some cases to just comment on my ongoing adventures on "Wonder Planet."
Those who know me in personally, in passing or more extensively, may find comments and discussions of conversations and ideas expressed on this site. Where I will try not to "out" you in any way, I will not edit my life as that would be contradictory to what I am trying to accomplish here.
Though you only need worry about this if you should to say something of substance (directly or indirectly).
a life so dear
