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JAMES' PERSONAL WRITINGS: SLOVING
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Showing posts with label Solidarity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Solidarity. Show all posts

8.07.2016

To a young friend deciding to pay all to the revolution: ☺ I am afraid I may never have the wisdom to counsel any individual beside myself. But........

To a young friend deciding to pay all to the revolution: ☺ I am afraid I may never have the wisdom to counsel any individual beside myself. But I constantly drive myself to understand collectively where our opportunities are. That tens of millions of us have not quit our jobs and planted Our Lives squarely in the way of the destruction of all creation, of all that is good, is clinical mass suicidal insanity. If every breath you hold yourself to the standard of being unconditional tough loving incarnate, I am so glad for you and anyone that finds that path. It is the only sanity. It is the only hope although I really see no hope, but I fight anyway, because that's the kind of person I want to be, and that's the kind of life I want to experience. James

8.04.2016

***** To a young activist worthy of the name, musing over several outlets she is considering now: Not that you asked, but I think it is more important how we do, than what we do. The only true Revolution is the Absolute, Total, every breath, embodiment of the spirit........

***** To a young activist worthy of the name,  musing over several outlets she is considering now: Not that you asked, but I think it is more important how we do, than what we do. The only true Revolution is the Absolute, Total, every breath, embodiment of the spirit of unconditional loving by whatever words or none at all. I find almost none of that anywhere including in Progressive actions whose ideas I support but whose spirit I do not. Bernie has the spirit, I see it in few of his supporters.  Those on the 10 day March from Philly to DC had the spirit, and then lost it almost immediately upon arrival.  That spirit is all hope. There is no hope besides that spirit. Everything we detest is symptom of the spirit of unconditional loving, serving from the soul in solidarity, being missing. James

8.03.2016

August priorities for James. Issues: 1. Interfere with the American Israeli extermination of Palestinians. 2. Stand for the Human rights of Americans who are black, especially in Washington DC where I reside. (Although.....

August priorities for James.

Issues:

1. Interfere with the American Israeli extermination of Palestinians.

2. Stand for the Human rights of Americans who are black, especially in Washington DC where I reside. (Although this has been, is, and will always be a major priority of mine, I'm disappointed to find that rarely can I stand with organized actions as I find them little more than Tantrums which can only hurt the cause.)

3. Maintain currency on strategic Global issues.

Expectations of James for August:

1. Research and outline the housing,  income and job situation and Prospects for Americans who are black and or poor in the Washington DC region,  to inform my ongoing advocacy work and possibly to inform the work of others.

1b. Provide written input on Washington's Consolidated plan.

2. Keep visible the violation of Palestinian human rights around Washington DC primarily by positioning the free Palestine vehicle in the public eye in strategic locations, and secondarily by a low level of republishing informed articles and such..

3. Maintain and upgrade the free Palestine vehicle.

4. Re-establish personally living fully in solidarity with the global neediest. Improve my ability to maintain longer work hours and reduce physical and psychological fatigue.

5. Basic but substantially reduced currency in strategic Global moral issues utilizing Facebook, Google Alert, and blogger.

***** After all these years I think I figured out how to offer a way that I don't waste people's time. For those who find a deep Envy for the quality of life of a Martin Luther King jr., a Gandhi, Malala, Jesus..., and yearn for such a quality of life for themselves and those who they love, I think I have ideas and example to offer. For those who do not feel such deep Envy for the quality of life of the likes of these I think I have nothing of value to share.

***** After all these years I think I figured out how to offer a way that I don't waste people's time. For those who find a deep Envy for the quality of life of a Martin Luther King jr., a Gandhi, Malala,  Jesus..., and yearn for such a quality of life for themselves and those who they love, I think I have ideas and example to offer. For those who do not feel such deep Envy for the quality of life of the likes of these I think I have nothing of value to share.

8.02.2016

A confession and a warning: I no longer live in solidarity with the global neediest. For years I have been, in my soul, and to a large degree in material reality. I realized today that in recent weeks........

A confession and a warning: I no longer live in solidarity with the global neediest. For years I have been, in my soul, and to a large degree in material reality. I realized today that in recent weeks that has stopped being true for me spiritually, and to a degree in material reality. What caused me to be alert to this realization is the psychic pain that I have been in for the last week. I have felt depressed and adrift. Without bearings, without points of reference. Deliberately living each breath in solidarity with my neediest sisters and brothers has been my point of reference, my mooring, my bearings for years now. Feelings of guilt are in no way associated with this, nowhere in me. I'm doing the best I know from moment to moment. Because I walk my path alone, not in community, what I do is a metal high-wire act although it is one that generally I am unconsciously competent at and unaware of the extreme difficulty of staying on The Wire. Recent external opportunities and factors have caused me to lose my focus and fall off the wire. The pain of that has gotten my attention and caused me to wake up. Can I get back on The Wire? I hope so. We'll see. This was my third long trip on the free Palestine vehicle. This was my third and fourth long trip on the elf, the third going up last Thursday a week ago and the 4th coming back the last two days. Going up and coming back for the first time I stayed in the lowest cost possible Motel. The other times to conserve what limited dollars I have for donations to the global neediest I stayed in Walmart or Home Depot parking lots. I was aware of this new Choice, unsettled about it, but I went with it. In no way at the time did I understand it as a manifestation of having left full saladarity lived with the neediest. Again, guilt plays no role in this for me. Greed for total peace of heart, meaning, sense of moral clarity, Joy, is what I'm concerned with. The Quest for comfort crowded out these Within Me. Will be interesting to see what happens now. James

7.17.2016

***** Why we have never, probably will never, eliminate White (or any) Privilege: nearly all of those who have privilege, nearly all of we who have privilege, want peace and Justice in the world, want the best for our underprivileged sisters and brothers. We are simply unwilling to personally pay the price for that. If I have.......

Why we have never, probably will never, eliminate White (or any) Privilege: nearly  all of those who have privilege, nearly all of we who have privilege,  want peace and Justice in the world, want the best for our  underprivileged sisters and brothers.  We are simply unwilling to personally pay the price for that. If I have a loaf of bread because I stole the resources for it from my neighbor I have incited violence in the world in two ways by having that loaf of bread. 1. I have stolen what is his. 2. I have what he needs for himself and his family in truth or at least psychologically. Had it been done to me I would be incited to rage and violence, and so would you be. Even if in no way did I physically steal the resources from my neighbor that still leaves the incitement that my hoarding what he needs for himself and his family for a decent life rightly incites, rage and violence. White Privilege, all privilege, is, equals, superior material power. Superior economic power. Those in power, we in power, all of us that have resources that billions of people on Earth do not have, we are those of privilege. It is not the 1% in America, or the .1%, as we try and convince ourselves.  It is at least the top 20-50%  or more of us in America  that are grotesquely over privileged. It is we that are making certain that the Earth becomes more and more violent. All of us that have  the resources that billions on Earth are craving  are the rich young man that Jesus spoke of.  And we turn from his example  and lie to ourselves for 2000 years now that he did not mean that we,  each and every one of us, were to give all that we had,  all that we have, to the poor, so that we all were materially equal, exactly as we would expect every group of well brought-up toddlers to be. But we  refused to heed Jesus Direction,  to be like a toddler. Are you okay with that? Is your privilege worth the price to you of a world in Unstoppable violence and death spiral? Not me. Used to be, no more. Injustice, no peace. More than a chance, a rule of nature. Injustice, no peace. Injustice, no peace. Injustice, no peace.

7.15.2016

### In case you would like to understand how I am investing my life these days. This rough submission at this link, rather lengthy, has been turned into a two-part article in an........

### In case you would like to understand how I am investing my life these days. This rough submission at this link, rather lengthy, has been turned into a two-part article in an extremely admirable local publication called Streetsense which is a vehicle for raising issues of the poor and homeless in the DC region and providing ethical source of income for the homeless who sell the papers after buying them at a hefty discount.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jxl9xoHVT-o4d0qkONPJ1cIh3vefxD1fNyHMugw6HOE/edit?usp=drive_web

7.04.2016

6.30.2016

### There's really only one obstacle to Justice for our homeless sisters and brothers. We as a culture quite broadly want every Justice for our homeless sisters and brothers. Every Justice except for the only one that matters, economic Justice, because economic Justice requires the redistribution of wealth, and the best Among Us are unwilling to have more than a penny or two Avail wealth go to those in need. I'm not condemning us. Although I think we are condemning ourselves.

### There's really only one obstacle to Justice for our homeless sisters and brothers. The obstacle is not greedy corporations. The obstacle is not the government. We as a culture quite broadly want every Justice for our homeless sisters and brothers. Every Justice except for the only one that matters, economic Justice, because economic Justice requires the redistribution of wealth, and the best Among Us are unwilling to have more than a penny or two of our wealth go to those in need, let alone the substantial if not massively distribution that conscience, that Humanity, that heart requires. I'm not condemning us. Although I think we are condemning ourselves. Personally my life is devoted to restructuring this value system Within Myself, and I recognize that in doing so I fashion of my life my only possibility for so influencing others in the same direction. And I do so not for any Noble goal. I do so because there in lies the only life of joy and true meaning. I do what I do for the ultimate greed of it.

6.26.2016

### Yes, I am usually so scathing , so critical , so pessimistic about the future. Yes. But I think I am seeing a level of Citizen work that I certainly have not seen in fifty years or more. Millions.......

### Yes, I am usually so scathing , so critical , so pessimistic about the future. Yes. But I think I am seeing a level of Citizen work that I certainly have not seen in fifty years or more. Millions of citizens here and abroad turning attention away from selfish short-term pleasures to matters of Greater importance to the collective. This is important at least for themselves and for those around them. Joy is in the attempt to reduce the world's suffering. The individuals devoting more of their lives to this task become a demonstration of the path to those around them.

6.11.2016

*****  Eureka! The missing proof that justice is a necessary but entirely insufficient anti violent goal: throughout my life I have wanted Justice to be a sufficient goal. 15 years ago I was.........

*****  Eureka! The missing proof that justice is a necessary but entirely insufficient anti violent goal:

Throughout my life I have wanted Justice to be a sufficient goal. 15 years ago I was told by someone that didn't like me so much, an African American  female pastor in a prestigious completely White Main Line Philadelphia Church, ''James, you love Justice more than anyone I have ever met.'' ''No,'' I respectfully replied. ''Thank you, and I can't explain just why, I know what you're referring to in me, but that isn't it. I think what you're seeing is that I may love living beings, all of creation, more than anyone that you have ever met.'' I couldn't explain why better than that. I couldn't explain why to myself, but I knew it deep in my spirit.

Several years ago in an extremely deep study of the theological scholar Dominic Crossan on the historical Jesus I almost became persuaded he was correct, when he asserted, as later has also done Harvard African American Scholar Cornel West, that Justice is loving made publicly manifest. Subsequently I realized that that is sometimes true but not necessarily true. Think of those that wield Justice, True Justice out of hatred, out of blind self-righteousness, arrogance, evil. Think of Inspector Javert in Les Mis. 

But that was not sufficient proof that justice is an insufficient goal of the anti-violent warrior.

The proof, not the proof to you, the proof to me, just clicked into place as I pedaled this 200 lb ELFusion vehicle from the Washington Monument to my abode 3 miles away. In the 90-degree heat, dehydrated, mostly uphill and with a debilitating chest cold in its third day.

Several pieces clicked into place.

1. Gandhi said that physical force is a superior choice in the case where one's wife is being raped and the only way that the husband can stop the rape is with physical Force. Gandhi cited this example many times. What clicked into place is that he never said that physical Force was justified in protecting oneself, and he always behaved as though it absolutely was not. This may be an oversight but I think not. Why would that be?

2. Gandhi was not about his own life, ultimately he was not about the life or even the Dignity of the wife being raped, nor of the husband. He was about achieving an infinitely larger good, a prevailing Justice for All of humanity, indeed for all of creation. In being about winning that greater good it is necessary to tap into the ultimate power in the universe which he described as Soul Force, truth Force, the love of a mother for her child. He cited the love of a mother for her child as the ultimate power that he tried to tap into. He never said the love of a mother for justice. He never said the love of a mother for herself. Why? Because neither of them are as powerful a moral Force for the engagement of the mass of passive onlookers as the love of a mother for her child, which involves self-sacrifice.

3. That shows the third proof which you can prove to yourself I suspect. Ask yourself which moves you more, the mother protecting herself, or the mother sacrificing her life for her child? I did not ask if you were unmoved by the mother trying to protect herself. Of course you are, of course you should be as am I. But which moves you more? The Mother Out of Love sacrificing or risking her life for her child! The Ultimate Force in the universe that the anti-violent, loving, nonviolent Warrior devotes their very being to embodying for the joy of it, because they can't do otherwise, tapping into is that Force which can only be activated in the onlookers, you in the question I asked you a moment ago, can only be tapped into in the onlookers when they witness someone offering or giving their life for a cause Beyond and greater than themselves equivalent to a greater good for another or a greater good for others. The Selma Marchers were putting their body In Harm's Way for their children, for their race, for their brothers and sisters.  The Freedom Riders, Alice Paul and her sisters,  the tens of thousands of Egyptians in Tahrir square, Malala, the school children in Soweto. And finally, number

4.  The anti-violent Warrior  the loving Warrior,  cannot tap into the ultimate power within them self  for justice, neither Justice for everyone, or just just for their self.  We don't work that way. We're not built that way. It's a function of our DNA.  Justice is a motivating force. It is not as motivating a force  as the heart connected to the well-being of another(s)  and thereby being engaged to protect the life or the Dignity of the other.  'Man hath no greater love than to lay down his life for his brother.' The ultimate need, the ultimate motivating force, of the healthy human being is meaning,  the potentially great meaning to the life of another. The definitive work on this is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for meaning.  Whether one  got out of the death camp alive in Nazi Germany he observed was not a function of how healthy and strong the individual was coming in. It was a function of how desperately important  the inhabitant perceived it to be that they survive  so that they could get out to help someone else,  the wife,  or in the case of Frankel,  a much larger Community by publishing his psychological treatise.

The ultimate motivation that mother nature gave us was not  the desire for self-preservation, or for justice, even for justice  for the larger group.  It is to protect the very lives and dignity  of others.  Yes, she gave us the desire for justice, and the drsire to protect oneself. But if that's all she gave us, we essentially socially dependent species from the very beginning, then we would not have survived through the Millenia.  She gave us the ultimate motivation  of caring more about the group then about our own lives.  This is the only Force sufficient  to enable the anti violent Warrior  to go as far and as deep with as much courage and selflessness as an Alice Paul, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali,  and the others that we Revere have to go. This is a huge step for me.

In part I departed from the Democracy spring action a month ago because I sensed it was only about Justice. I do love justice, immensely, but I knew even then Justice is not enough. It's too little too late. Part of my long hesitation to get involved in support of what Bernie Sanders was doing was because although my soul realized that he was going for a much greater good for and all of creation , many most or near all of his followers were simply pursuing Justice and in large part Justice for themselves. I'm not opposed to that per se. I don't deny their right to do so. But I knew deep in my soul it was too little too late.

Now I have the proof I was looking for. The pursuit of justice as an end goal now is way too little way too late. These are the final nanosecond on the clock and they are ticking down.

6.08.2016

### Not Human Rights, activists, but rather human rights catalysts. I don't care about words so much but I do care about Concepts. Although I have paid a high price in the........

### Not Human Rights, activists, but rather human rights catalysts. I don't care about words so much but I do care about Concepts. Although I have paid a high price in the last decade-and-a-half for fighting against the dilution and perversion of the word and concept 'activists,' like quite a few such words I think it was Ill chosen to begin with. Catalyst strikes me as a much truer capture of what Gandhi and those alongside him were and did , and Martin Luther King and those alongside of him, the tens of thousands of young people in Tahrir square, Malala, Alice Paul and the hundreds that fought alongside her, the Freedom Riders, SNCC.... They made of themselves such an extremely different thing, such a new extraordinarily moral thing , even though relatively miniscule in number versus their country and world population, exactly as a catalyst does they caused a hugely disproportionate change through the large population. They didn't try to manipulate. They didn't try to control. They didn't try to force... other than themselves, over whom they exercised huge self-control, discipline, molding themselves into something so radically pure, radically pure anti-violence, radically courageous loving, that the infinitely larger numbers could not avoid being changed by them. In nature as I understand it there is little if anything so relatively powerful as the catalyst, minute qualities of an element that fundamentally change an infinitely larger whole. Those who I have envied and admired throughout history, those who I try to be worthy of following, because of their unique effectiveness, I understand to be catalysts. They fashioned themselves into catalysts at enormous personal cost. This is what I strive to be and what I wish for others to strive to be. Human rights catalysts. Yes, Catalysts can be totally ineffective. They can become what is needed but if the nature of the mass surrounding them is impervious to reacting, incapable of reacting, protected from reacting... the Catalyst has no effect. But where I see profound progress in human morality throughout history it has been such a catalytic reaction that brought it about. I see no other chance. I see no other hope. I see no other way. Well, I see an infinite variety of ways that require a much lower price on the part of the would-be change agent that hold the promise of doing nothing but killing what little time is left for all decent future. Yes, 'Be the change you wish to see in the world.'

6.06.2016

### I would say that in my learning, experience, practice, observation, the true activist devotes their every breath to attempting to pay as much as possible of the price NOW, whatever price, including the ultimate price, for a better world... for others. I can think of.......

### I would say that in my learning, experience, practice, observation, the true activist devotes their every breath to attempting to pay as much as possible of the price NOW, whatever price, including the ultimate price, for a better world... for others. I can think of no exceptions. This is what they showed with their choices without hesitation. This is what they prepared and prepared and prepared and prepared... to do. Gandhi's words on the subject, 'I'm talking about the love of a mother for her child.' Anyone that is seriously interested in this topic that has not watched the PBS documentary, Freedom Riders, has really disabled themselves.

5.28.2016

We can't truly love ourselves until we love the neediest more than ourselves.

We can't truly love ourselves until we love the neediest more than ourselves.

### Everything I value in myself came from my dad. Most......

### Everything I value in myself came from my dad. Most amazing person, most Godly, most loving, I've ever encountered personally. Incredible blessing to me. Immense over-privilege mine, and responsibility. Just the other day I was wondering what he would think if he saw me now. Lol. The last he knew me he was in his two-million-dollar house which he had created for us, not for himself, in one of the wealthiest towns in the world. He was born into poverty. Material property. I think he would be very surprised to see me, but I think he would smile, shake his head, and not be displeased. Yeah, I can hear a warm laugh. He's been physically gone from me for about 30 years now. He and my mom were both on their second marriage and had me very late in life. Some apples fall close to the tree, some fall very far away as did my two female siblings.

### Not until tens of thousands of us would gladly die for a better future for all species will there be real hope of the real Revolution... anti-violence.

### Not until tens of thousands of us would gladly die for a better future for all species will there be real hope of the real Revolution... anti-violence.

***** This is who I am inside, all the time, every day, every hour, about Palestine about environmental destruction, about so much Injustice. This is who I am. This is where I live.