HEALING

HEALING

by Norm Lowry

We live in a culture gone mad, a society so disjointed that we have forgotten both who we and those around us really are.  We have given up our health--physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually--and our ability to heal ourselves and others, all for a distorted sense of power that only destroys.  Few of us seem to be able to claim any happiness at all, only misery, which we blame on someone or something else.  And if asked for the name or names of those with whom we have genuinely satisfying relationships, few if any can honestly provide one name.

So what do we generally do?   We tend to buy into society's love of mental illness; a state where circumstances are fully beyond our control; a state where we can play the victim; a state where we can take medication that will make our pain go away.  But does our pain genuinely go away or do we simply transport ourselves into a state where we can get out of dealing with our reality for yet another moment or two…?

My life has been no different than the many others who have suffered horrendous abuses, tortures, and tragedies.  I've found my obsessions, compulsions, and hatreds with which to build massive walls to keep myself presumably safe.  I've found myself meaningfully classified and diagnosed, professionally, and, I've taken my poisons which raised my seratonin level so I could feel better, for my token moment or two.  Yet where did it all get me?  It left me alone, firmly entrenched behind self-built walls that shut out all meaningful interaction.

One day, while literally depressed out of my mind, I went to see a movie.  I found that while I was watching the movie, my depression was nonexistent.  When the movie was over and I set foot outside, I found that my depression was right there waiting for me.  So I went back inside and watched another movie, another three or four movies to be truthful.  It didn't take extreme brilliance to realize that my thoughts and choices of the day were altering both my feelings and physiology.  I was choosing to depress, then choosing to stop depressing, when I found a more effective way to engage life.   My old, self-protective paradigm was faulty and had become useless to me.  So I went in search of a new paradigm.

That day, at the movie theater, my insanity was exposed for what it really was:  a massive lie that was literally sucking quality life right out of me and, it was my chosen lie.  There  may genuinely be such a thing as mental illness, if there's a genuine pathology that can be found to physically prove it.   And surely medications are at times needed, as they seem to lessen the anxiety of those turning certain emotional corners.  But I was past this basic need.  What I found has completely changed my life.

I found a teacher who taught me six things:

1.  Life can only deeply be engaged by the one willing to accept complete responsibility for all personal behavior.

2.  As neither the past nor what occurred in the past can limit me, only working in the present and toward the future can effectively aid my personal growth.

3.  Relating as ourselves is always fruitful, relating as "transference figures" is never fruitful.

4.  Personal growth is never to be found in excusing behaviors on the basis of unconscious motivations.

5.  The morality of behavior--the distinguishing between right and wrong solidifies the investment in personal growth. 

6.  The more satisfactory our patterns of behavior, the more and better we fulfill our basic needs.  (William Glasser)

Today I no longer live by trying to deny the real world.  I do not try to fulfill my needs as if some aspect of my world does not exist.  I do not live in defiance of the existence of actual problems.  Today, I live to be involved with and to engage people, all people.  I look for quality, satisfying relationships in which I ask others to be real with me, as I am real with them.  I seek to change only me, as it is absurd to think that I can change another, anyway.  I correct myself when wrong and credit myself when right.

In being healed, I am becoming a healer….

5/24/15

Resistance as Exile in Prison

 by Norm Lowry

 February 24, 2015

 “The old yellow pus of American cowardice is once again throbbing in the veins of this sorry country. How does it appear? In chauvinism that struts safely in its own land, away from danger. It is easy to talk ‘dangerously' about knocking people down when you are on your own turf, behind an embattlement of thousands of nuclear missiles and an ocean.” - Jack Henry Abbott, with Norman Mailer

 Our ugly and tasteless culture cannot abide women and men with ideals, whose faith alone compels us to purposefully give up our lives of ease, for the betterment of mankind. We are not saints or heroes. We have simply grown sick and tired of the lies and can no longer stomach the fact that it is these lies that allow even we who are imprisoned to live better than two-thirds of all humans on earth. Our society’s chosen lies cover the obvious truths that we are the chief oppressors and terrorists of humanity, the fiscal pillagers of cultures and peoples we deem to be our lesser, the slumlords of humanity - all in the name of our country, our favored gods, and religions.

    Our society’s prisons are filled, not according to demographic substantiation of actual crime, but according to publicly-and-media-driven lies, racism, poverty, and political incorrectness or discomforts. All inmates in American prisons are there to be broken or silenced, no matter the perceived, necessary means or method. Anyone who believes that there is any justice involved in America’s justice or prison complexes is simply deluded.

      My gratitude goes out to all who are, or have been, imprisoned for the love of humanity, or who offer encouraging and inspirational uplift to those of us who are imprisoned. Truly, I could not do this alone, as prison is filled with death and human loneliness. My peers, both inmate and staff, constantly seek to bring me around to their chosen reality - that I cannot stop nuclear weaponry and warmaking, racism and bigotry, impoverishment and community violence, et. al, but they are deceived. In one, I am stopping all of them. If we can create adversity, surely we can disappear it.

 Blessings,
 Norm

A MESSAGE FROM AMOS, forwarded by Norm

write Norm at Norman Lowry KN 9758        

                      SCI Dallas

                      1000 Follies Rd

                      Dallas PA 18612

See Norm's profile     http://www.blogger.com/profile/09050714675357787551       

Read Norm's book CONSCIENCE BEHIND BARS: THE PRISON LETTERS OF NORMAN LOWRY    

https://www.academia.edu/2413332/Conscience_Behind_Bars_The_Prison_Letters_of_Norman_Lowry_Introduction_and_forewords_by_Dennis_Rivers_Eileen_Fleming_and_John_Stoner_

I share this, which I found deeply meaningful, from my Bible reading.  -- Norm

Amos 5:9-24  THE MESSAGE translation

"Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar and stamp righteousness into the mud.  Do you realize where you are?  You're in a cosmos star-flung with constellations by God, a world God wakes up each morning and puts to bed each night.  God dips water from the ocean and gives the land a drink.  God; God-revealed does this.  And he can destroy it just as easy as make it.  He can turn this vast wonder into a total waste. 

People hate this kind of talk.  Raw truth is never popular.  But here it is, bluntly spoken:  because you run roughshod over the poor and take the bread out of their moths, you're never going to mob into the luxury homes you have built.  You're never going to drink wine from the expensive vineyards you've planted.  I know precisely the extent of your violations, the enormity of  your sins.  Appalling!  You bully right living people, taking bribes right and left and kicking the poor when they're down.  

Justice is a lost cause.  Evil is epidemic.  Decent people throw up their hands.  Protest and rebuke are useless, a waste of breath.

Seek God and not evil--and live!  You talk about God, the God-of-the-angel-armies, being your best friend.  Well, live like it, and maybe it will happen.

Now again, my master's message, God, God-of-the-angel-armies: Go out into the streets and lament loudly!  Fill the malls and shops with cries of doom!   Weep loudly, "Not me! Not us, not now!"  Empty offices, stores, factories, workplaces.  Enlist everyone in the general lament.  I want to hear it loud and clear when I make my visit!  God's decree.

Woe to all of you who want God's judgment day!  Why would you want to see God, want him to come?  When God comes, it will be bad news before it's good news, the worst of times, not the best of times.  Here's what it's like:  a mean runs from a lion right into the jaws of a bear.  A woman goes home after a hard day's work and is raped by a neighbor.  At God's coming we face hard reality, not fantasy--a black cloud with no silver lining!

I can't stand your religious meetings.  I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions.  I want nothing to do with your religious projects, your pretentious slogans and goals.  I'm sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making.  I've had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.  When was the last time you sang to me?  Do you know what I want?  I want justice--oceans of it.  I want fairness--rivers of it.  That's what I want.  That's all I want."

Finding Radical Love

FINDING RADICAL LOVE                                                                      Dec. 9, 2013

To me, the Gospel, the "Good News," is all about revealing the eternal freedom (past, present, future) that has ALWAYS been our (everyone and everything).  We simply are afforded the HONOR chosenness) of helping others to become aware of it all.  We "do" because we "are" eternally free!  It's the meaning behind "resurrection," which is the power behind "the cross," which ALL are invited to take up, in whatever LITERAL sense Jesus sees fit for "the cross" to be.  For some of us, at least, "the cross" means LITERAL, earthly death, for exposing the illegitimacy of the "idolatry" of " institutional religion" and of ALL that is "empire" (nationalism, statism, kings, presidents, congresses, treasuries, police, etc.).  So, I remain excited and eager to experience all of the Joy of Jesus, who loved us mere humans enough to become one of us, in order to show us, in "real time," the way home.

Lately, I have been thinking about, and pondering, my "UNCONFORMITY."

Ched Myers, in BINDING THE STRONG MAN, spoke best what my heart and brain embrace: "The way of nonviolence, as Gandhi said, will not prevail on account of words or argument, 'it shall be proved by persons living ii in their lives with utter disregard for the consequences to themselves.' "

Some HARD demographics have been floating through my total being, of late:  80% of ALL Americans (by survey) profess to trusting in a "loving" God, 80% of ALL Americans (by survey) profess to trusting in a "loving" God, 80% of ALL Americans (by survey) believe in the NECESSITY of a "strong" military, 50% of ALL Americans are considered to be poor (by their government), and 16% (1 in 6) of ALL Americans (including 50% of ALL Native American children) go to bed hungry…EVERY DAY!

I find something tragically amiss in the image presented by these figures.  How is one to suppose that the society of which "everyone," or so we are told, desires to be a part, is so schizophrenically paranoid that it is willing to blindly allow its leaders to expend 70% of ALL Federal Revenues on a "strong" military, when its supposed "loving" God is so close at hand?   Maybe AMerica's god, like AMerica's so-called god-trusters, doesn't genuinely know how to effectively deal with Love, Power, Justice, Poverty and Starving Children et al.

Thanksgiving day, here in Hell, began with a lull in our otherwise escalating violence.  Recently, an inmate fight left a guard injured, which raised the stakes quite dramatically.  Add a face slashing and the morning was ripe for an inmate stabbing on my block, for which we received a complimentary lockdown.  At dinnertime, our warders were quite cautious, choosing to release our block in small numbers.  This was in no small way aided by the greatly pacifying effect of a better-than-average meal, which replaces our norman, pathetically poor fare on 3-4 occasions, yearly.   The calming effect was fairly short lived.  The following day ended with a fight on our block and with yet another complimentary lockdown.

My fellow inmates have not ceased to drone on about the "black" inmate who stabbed another.  Feigning ignorance, they just can't seem to understand why the blacks tend to be so ready to act out their anger in such open manners.  When quite a number of my peers asked me for my take on the matter, I responded with demographics: Around 12% of the total U.S. population is African AMerican.  African Americans commit less than 12% of ALL U.S. crime yet fill in excess of 38% of ALL U.S. jail and prison beds.  Dumbfoundedly, my peers responded with absolute profundity, "You're so naive," then walked away to bitch and moan to someone willing to join in with their "make me feel good" insanity.

Last week, my friend Eileen, lit a candle for me and for all who are precious to me (which is EVERYONE), near the ancient temple wall in Jerusalem, Israel.  It was a visual prayer for PEACE.   As I shared word of this act of Love with others, the response was most favorable, until it was remembered that Eileen was the friend who was openly critical of Israel's secretive nuclear weapons program, of U.S. complicity, and of Israel's cruelties toward nuclear whistleblower Mordicai Vanunu.  The discussion rapidly digressed to BIG BAD IRAN and how they simply needed to bee NUKED.  I excused myself, so as not to diminish the act of Love by al prized friend.

Some of the prison's church folks recently came to me, asking that I cease my associations with Jews; which was an expansion of their previous lists; which included sex offenders, rapists, blacks and Muslims.  With blood boiling, I informed them that I would no longer be talking with them.

Another friend, Berry, recently sent an article, in which Author Ian Welsh's premise was: "For some time my base scenario has been as follows:  We are so screwed."  Quite compassionately and masterfully, the author proceeded to voice his urgent concerns regarding our allowed pillage and desecration of all that supports life on our fragile planet and in our fiscal, industrial, military and political institutions.  He asked tough questions and offered keen insights, such as those by Wendell Berry:  "We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are.  Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed?  Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers?  Why else would we--by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians--be participating in its destruction?  Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and reward them for it.  We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cisterns are wealthier than the rest of us.  How do we submit?  By not being RADICAL enough.  Or by not being THOROUGH enough, which is the same thing!"

I've been pondering what it would mean for me to become RADICAL; THOROUGH.   American church and state have long been partners in advocating, perpetrating and perpetuating the brutalization of humanity and the desecration of our planet.  To draw a line in the sand, between myself and the originators of such execrable malignity, seems to me to be simply normal and restorative.

My nearly 61 years have borne witness, as my so-called "Christian" society advocated "turning the head," while my black neighbors were brutalized, burned and hanged; while women and children were belittled, mistreated and molested; while injustice and abject poverty were heaped on the backs of minorities and on those already poor; while war-making was celebrated as our DUTY to God.  Though our mainstream media and political pundits aid us in keeping our heads in the sand, today our situation is so dire that our children and grandchildren are 100% GUARANTEED to bear the consequences of our abominations.   They ARE going to die and it is WE who have MURDERED them…SIGH!

    I'm no longer a citizen of the United States of America.  I have renounced America's so-called "Christian" religion.  I'm nonviolently at war with, and in prison for saying my simple "NO" to our society's EXTREME love of Violence, Racism, Bigotry and Poverty-production.  This is  my NORMAL!

I'm madly in love with our Creator and with ALL women, children and men; boundlessly and indiscriminately.  I'm going to allow my love to become RADICAL; THOROUGH enough to make a change in my little corner of our world that, for years, I was helping to destroy!

CONSEQUENCES

               CONSEQUENCES      By Norm Lowry                       October 2013

"My nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected."  --Gandhi

We choose what we live by  Directly, we choose our thoughts and actions; indirectly, our feelings and physiology.  Internal control holds sway and external control is utterly nullified, as we choose to become responsible for the inherent, often frightful and severe pricetags attached to our volition.  Consequence lies solely in our life-offering or life-defeating thoughts and actions.

This premise is faultlessly illustrated in Raj Patel's solicitude over the McDonalds Big Mac, which he posits, in all actuality, to be "The $200.00 Hamburger."

When we think of the Big Mac, we think of a $4.00 sandwich, which can be discounted when packaged in a meal.  We seldom consider the socio-political, ecological or economic impact.  It tends to make us nervous when we consider the sordid costs, such as the "carbon footprint" (around $300,000,000.00 per year for all Big Macs sold in the U.S.), government agricultural (beef, corn, et al.) subsidies, governmental economic and healthcare subsidies to underpaid/under benefitted employees, underpayment to agroworkers in Florida's tomato fields et al (slave labor), etc.

Who do we presume to be fiscally responsible for this year's U.S. $107,800,000,000.00 Big Mac subsidy?  To whom should I remit my $196,000.00 repayment to society, for the 1000+ Big Macs which I've consumed over the past 40+ years.

Recently, on America's most popular morning TV news/gossip show, the panelists nearly unanimously agreed that maybe it's time to remove the phrase, "innocent women and children," from media reporting on oppression, terrorism and war, due to its caustic impactions.  I bawled like a baby!  I mean, who on earth, in the history of humanity, has been more abused than "innocent women and children?"  Women are humanity's most faithful, though largely unrecognized and unfitted, servant-leaders; children, its most helpless yet hope-filled trusting precious ones!  How dare we?

Interestingly enough, the lone dissenter to this conversation was a woman who dared to play the "I get paid less than a man for doing the same work" card.  The panelists got fidgety, made a few jokes and moved on, missing yet another momentous opportunity to adsress the monstrous bigotry and racism that is literally rotting our humanity away, from the inside out.

This week will see the premier of a movie which chronicles the hijacking of an American Captained container ship by Somali pirates.  From the pre-release trailer we are promised that, once again, good will prevail against evil.  Tom Hanks portrays the hijacked captain, a hero.  I wonder who will portray Larry Summers, former Obama chief economic advisor and recent appointee for Federal Reserve Chairman who, while an executive at the World Bank, spearheaded the dumping of U.S. toxic/nuclear waste into the ocean off Somalia.  Accepted reasoning was that it was more economically sound to pay $2.50 per ton for disposal in Somalia, compared to $1000.00+ per ton for disposal in the U.S.  For his fiscal brilliance, Mr. Summers was appointed to the Clinton Administration Treasury Department.  Somali fishermen lost their fishing ground to toxic, radiation-typical poisoning and chose to become pirates.  With no justification intended, in the actual, portrayed hijacking, did good prevail over evil?

Our society has no shortage of good people!  This being so, how is it that we allow:

1.  our consumption to be such that, if all other nations were to consume as we consume, it would require Nine Earths to absorb the ecological effect?

2.  racism, bigotry and poverty-production to drive our so-called Justice System?

3.  our prisons to house 25%+ of the world's total domestic inmate population, in a country comprising merely 4.5% ot its total population?

4.  our government to expend 70%+ of all federal revenue on war making?

5.  et al.?

Inside each of us exists a "quality world" (William Glasser); a virtual picture gallery of what we most value.  We pursue only what we most value!  In order to perpetrate or perpetuate an "evil,," we have to make it our "best" option; the "right" thing to do, according to our "quality world."

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I sat enjoying a cup of coffee, in my favorite Portland Oregon Coffee Shop.  Three friends, Portland CIty Police Officers, came in late that morning and were quite haggard looking.  Greeting them, I said, "You guys look like crap.   Something bad happened, didn't it?"  They proceeded to fill me in on the occurrences at NYC's Twin Towers; of the planes hitting the towers.  The youngest officer commented, "But you told us a couple months ago that this was going to happen."

After that morning, the subject was never broached again.  This was quite surprising, especially so, as the ensuing weeks exposed Portland Oregon as being a key city in the supposed terrorist attacks.

There is no history nor holy book which tells us that those who perpetrate and/or perpetuate oppressive horrors will end well.  There are always consequences!

Love

                                    Love                                 September 2013

                          by Norm Lowry

Love is the Divine Essence,and the altar of its flowering;

The Love and the beloved, spoken into existence;

The rudiment, development, pilgrimage and never-ending destination, 

The refulgent, imperishable merger of infinite and finite beauty.

Love is the embrace of the solitary nature inherent in both life and death;

The seeming desertedness from which all genuine concomitance springs;

The perceived tragedy; the death to self which removes the fear from truth-telling;

The submissive individuality which allows risk-filled adventure, in a world as alive as we.

Love is the adoption of a new inclination; a resolute fixedness of attitude;

The posture of stalwart conduct; the animus of selflessness; the practice of fruitful suffering;

The quintessence of unconditional giving;  the negation of tyranny; the repudiation of violence;

The coming home to indiscriminate intimacy; the reconciliation with everyone and everything.

If I want Love, my aim will be to live a life of uncontaminated tenderness;

Self-conceit, self-exaltation, envy, suspicion and resentment will cease;

Vitality will be birthed in the privacy of silent embrace with our Creator and with all mankind.

Affirmation will emerge from the knowledge that the meaning of life cannot be discovered alone.

If I want Love, I will be sated with serenity, peace of mind/heart and centeredness;

Gloating, dejection, distress and threat of terror will not influence what I think or do;

My choices will disclaim all outgrowth of my actions and offered homage of others;

Security is assured in who, or more pointedly, whose I am.

If I am Love, my joy is to indiscriminately and boundlessly cherish both God and man;

My pursuit is patient endurance, nonjudgmental favor and unrestricted access to all;

My discipline is subjugation of all self-concern to mastered intellect tempered by wisdom;

My pledge is the promise that  my word my be taken to the bank.

If I am Love, polar opposites of both nature and emotion will be treated as identical;

My actions will be trustworthy yet will not influence or bias my course;

Praise will not inflate my sense of substantiality; criticism will not reduce me;

Running from danger and leaving precious ones unprotected will never occur.

To Love is to realize that "God (Perfect Love) for me is inscrutable yet transparently apparent; undecipherable yet palpable."  (Eileen Fleming)

The Chasm Between Dogma and Doing

The Chasm Between Dogma and Doing                                                September 2013

by Norm Lowry

“[It is] necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.”  - Leo Tolstoy

Producing a breach in relationships with important people, accepted conventions and institutions and deeply-seated ideology, a paradigm shift occurred within me in the Spring of 2009, when I chose to destroy property leased to the U.S. Military.  This action was my first , of three, amped-up protestations in which I pointedly employed civil disobedience; my seemingly small voice saying its solitary “No” to our society’s extreme love of violence, racism, bigotry and poverty-production.  My total required investment in prison is nearly nine years (four served; five yet to be served).  When coupled with the resultant and costly ruptures in important relationships, the price tag seems big, but is small, as there is much at stake...the survival of mankind.

Extreme?  Not even close!  Extreme would have been for me to continue holding at arm’s length the fact my country’s “military-industrial complex,” which expends more than half of the world’s total military expenditures, thinks themselves to be sensible in their consideration that the nuclear option is viable.  Their thinking is the same regarding their use of unlimited biological, drone, laser and microwave weaponry, etc.  Extreme would have been to ignore my country’s insatiable thirst for war making and its endless fiscal and political sanctions, which seem to constitute history’s most extensive program of purposeful genocide.  Extreme would have been to ignore the resolute collapsing of our and the world’s economy, a corrupt judiciary system, a prison-industrial system based in racism and bigotry, a gasping-for-breath ecology, and religion which mostly cosigns it all...in the name of all that is Love.

You will not find in me remorse or any type of wavering from my well-thought-out and purposeful change in my life’s direction, which has led to prison.  Though I hate prison and see no value in it whatsoever, I would rather be here and free than to be in my old world and enslaved by all the lies that we as a society have told ourselves in order to feel good about our lives which are built on the backs of those we see as being less than we.   

Countless are the letters and conversations I’ve had which, while accepting that our lives and our seeming security are greatly at risk, if not actually nonexistent, still ask the lesser and selfishly more disturbing, to their sense of well being, questions:  Why would you renounce your U.S. citizenship?  If you don’t like America, why don’t you just leave?  What would make you willing to renounce your religion?  Aren’t you afraid of God and hell?  Why would you declare a state of perpetual nonviolent war against ALL violence, racism, bigotry and poverty-production?  What makes you so sure that all violence is bad?  Why would you destroy military property?  Aren’t you proud of those who bought your freedom and of those who continue  to protect it?  How can you befriend child molesters, rapists, pedophiles, gays, blacks and Muslims?

Renouncing my citizenship seems a no-brainer.  Nationalism, patriotism and statism seem only to be substitutes for honest, loving relationships with people; all people, no matter their lot in life.  Exclusive national loyalties originate and maintain our conventions and institutions of oppression, the sources of society-eradicating weaponry and violence.  Maintaining my narrow-focused national citizenship revealed my rejection of deep, satisfying relationship with our Creator, which alone, to me, is capable of inspiring oneness with all of humanity.

The fact that I reject all that national citizenship seems to stand for in no way means that I don’t like America.  America is my earthly birthplace.  To me, there is no difference between the value of Americans and all others.  The United States of America convinced its citizenry to steal the land from its indigenous residents, who generally invited outsiders to share it and to nourish it.  America does not own the land, no matter what we are told by its empire-builders.  This land is mine as much as it is yours, as is all of the earth.  If you wish to exert your temporal, nationalistic authority to remove me, you are already forgiven; eternity is already ours and we are already sharing it...somewhere in time.

Renouncing the institutions and conventions of my religion also seems a no-brainer.  Religion which seeks to dogmatize, control, manipulate, coerce, threaten or cosign nationalism and war is cult.  What I shed was merely cult.  I love our Creator and all of humanity, boundlessly and indiscriminately.  This is my true religion.  All else simply got in the way.  All I did was to relieve myself of an illicit weight which was never mine to carry.  

As to being afraid of God and hell, my answer is “No” and “No.”  If God is Love, there is nothing to fear.  If there is a hell, I would be honored to go there and minister healing and life to the damned.

To declare war on violence is to love our Creator and all of humanity.  Violence, in all forms, is the human substitute for love.  Any oppression of another human being or of our earth and its resources is violence.  If I need Love, I do not need violence.

To destroy military property is to destroy the means of many forms of violence.  It would not be my way to destroy simply for the sake of destruction.  This would be, in and of itself, violence.  Nor would I destroy property in any manner which would physically harm any person.  Yet I do believe that we should destroy all things military, acknowledging that military is  but a small segment of all that is violent. 

While I do have pride in people, I do not believe that it is people who buy or protect my freedom.   That was and is our Creator’s doing.  Whether military, police, prison guard, lawmaker, president, etc., I need and want the person yet have no need of their position or institution.

Regarding my choice of friends, I consider myself to be a friend of everyone, in spite of your chosen behavior, good or bad.  We have the ability to heal each other of the vast majority of all addiction, compulsion and disease.  That others will not choose to do so is not my issue.

The fact that many valued and precious relationships have been breached by my actions and subsequent imprisonment is of no light concern to me.  Relationships are priceless and are the product of love.  If our love is illicit, our relationships will be shallow at best, continuing to foment destruction and death.  But if our love is selfless, and thus licit, we will find the ways to cause destruction and death to cease.

     “The final destination of man is Love.”   --Thomas Merton

Recommended reading (These books contain some crucial insight and are great springboards to continuing research):

A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES  by Howard Zinn

THE NEW JIM CROW, by Michelle Alexander

CROSSING THE RUBICON by Mike Ruppert

THE GREAT DEFORMATION by David Stockman

THE JESUS DRIVEN LIVE by Michael Hardin