There is another way! 5 comments

30 Apr 2002 @ 02:18, by Quidnovi "You've flapped and fluttered against limits long enough. You've been a bird without wings in a house without doors or windows. Compassion builds a door. Restlessness cuts a key. Ask!"—Jelaluddin Rumi The poem from which this quote comes from goes on in this way: "Those who don't feel this love pulling them like a river.....let them sleep." For, truly, "THEY" are sleeping!!! —You know whom— THEY call us Liberals. And we call them Conservatives. But, you know—KNOW in your heart (in the true sense of "knowing")—that it's not really ENTIRELY about politics—it never was! Politics is only one of the manifestations, one of the guises, of how it is carried out and how it manifests in the phenomenological world in which we live ...Society ... Nations ... Globalism. It is not REALLY just about Liberals vs. Conservatives, is it? It's about THE HUMAN SPIRIT!!! "Humankind did not weave the web of Life. We are but one strand within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves."—Seattle, Chief of the Suquamish (1786-1866) Everything we find beautiful, good, just and true, THEY have been mocking, belittling and putting down. Earth, and all of God's creation, is precious to us—THEY call us "TREE HUGGERS." They call us "tree huggers" and they go on bleeding the planet of its resources and creatures (God's creatures) and call themselves "realists." The party of such one man whose favorite philosopher is supposedly Jesus, has taken the word LOVE and made a dirty word out of it: THEY call us "BLEEDING HEART LIBERALS." They call us "bleeding heart liberals", and WE take it as a compliment and WE wear it as a badge of honor, and WE call them...nothing. The party of such one man whose favorite philosopher is supposedly Jesus, has taken the word COMPASSION and made a mockery out of it: THEY call themselves "compassionate conservatives" and THEY call us HAND-WRINGING LIBERALS. They call us "hand-wringing liberals", and WE call them...nothing. Others have spoken for us, and though their words can no longer reach THEM—locked far away as they are in their ivory towers of conceit and arrogance and self-centeredness and self serving righteousness—the voices of saints and wise men still echo in humanity's collective memory. And WE still hear their voices. They call to us and keep us up at night: "This bread which you have set aside is the bread of the hungry; this garment you have locked away is the clothing of the naked; those shoes you let rot are the shoes of him who is barefoot; those riches you have hoarded are the riches of the poor."—St. Basil the Great (330-379) In THEIR arrogance, the SELF-RIGHTEOUS, the members of the "GRAND" Old Party, the followers of the man whose favorite philosopher is supposedly Jesus, look upon the poor and the destitute and THEY call them LOSERS. And they throw them breadcrumbs. They look among themselves, and to others like them, the well fed and well clothed, and rich men, and call themselves WINNERS. And they cover each other with honors. In their arrogance they see themselves as the "pillars of society", "self-made man", "tough-minded man", "super-men", and go on through life emphasizing the minutiae which comprise their "superiority." Those WE call "our fellow-men", THEY call "weaklings", "failures", "LOSERS". We try and help our fellows, THEY USE THEM for their own purposes and just throw them away when they are no longer needed. For, in their mind, this is THE WAY of the world and THEY are "realists" and THEY are "tough-minded" and they are "WINNERS." WE FOLLOW ANOTHER WAY. "You can look at a slum or peasant village...but it is only by entering into the world—by living in it—that you begin to understand what it is like to be powerless, to be like Christ."—Penny Lernoux, journalist(1940-1989) THERE IS ANOTHER WAY! "Love the poor, honor them, as you would honor Christ." —St. Louise de Marillac (1591-1660) Charity is a beginning but the world needs more than the trickle-down charity of "compassionate conservatives", the world needs SOCIAL JUSTICE! We are "SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE" and THEY spit those words back at us as something nasty and call it "socialism" and brandish it to the people as a scarecrow and call upon the fearsome specter of "communism." AND then, THEY turn around and accuse US of scare tactics and class warfare. Such scare tactics, beside just being a reflection of their practiced ability at DECEPTION, also reflects their total UNWILLINGNESS and INABILITY to think outside the box—the box into which humanity has fallen AND into which we will all perish (and our souls with us) if we fail to find our way out. They see themselves as "tough-minded" and "realists": They "KNOW TOO MUCH"—or think they do. "What ails most people is not that they are ignorant but that they know too much that isn't so." —Psychiatrist Adolf Meyer(John Hopkins Hospital) Our survival depends upon creativity—it always has. In our educational system, and in politics, we place a great deal of emphasis on learning to conform—to think in terms of what the teacher,the other fellow, the electorate (the polls), will think (or rather what "we think" they will think). Basically, we are taught WHAT to think, not HOW to think---a system which conservatives support as it appeals to their nature. WE KNOW that WE NEED NEW PARADIGMS! "Once we begin to look for differences instead of similarities, it is practically impossible not to get new ideas. For the habit of asking 'How do these things differ?' or 'How might this be different?' is one of the basic techniques of originality or creativeness."—Wendell Johnson (People in Quandaries) THEY call us "tree huggers", they call us "bleeding heart liberals" and WE call them...nothing. They are nothing to us. Nothing but the ghosts of people(and ideologies) whose times are gone. Ghosts who do not yet realize that their times are no more and who go on repeating mindlessly the same mechanical, empty rituals that used to anchor them to a world that they no longer recognize—no wonder they are trying so hard to bring us back to the past! Do not heed their voice and do not follow them, my friends, their path willonly lead you to a "ghostly grave." "YOU already own the costly elixir that will heal. You have only to use it."—Jelaluddin Rumi FD

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