Thursday, October 10, 2013

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