If It's Positive You Want

If it’s positive you want,

I am not your gal

I get it – I really do –

I’m as tired as you

are of all the kvetching,

whining, complaining

good-old-days yearning

downright bitchiness

of it all – very tired

and yes I know there is

a time for everything 

under the sun – even 

Solomon wasn’t original

to Solomon, you know –

so yes, there it a time for

putting on our happy hats

as we dream our big dreams

but life is no longer Eden

and I stand where I stand

right up to my kneecaps

in the shit of it all – and

I dare not pretend otherwise

for that lie won’t hunt,

that dog won’t dance

that girl won’t do

everything is not possible

but some things are

everything is not desirable

but some things are

everything is not good

but some things are

so when you tell me to

“be positive”

what I hear is

“be someone else”

for the someone that I am

is not an atom

but an ion

with cations and anions

mixing it up freely

sometimes one

sometimes the other

holding the fore

for are not positive

and negative

negative and positive

simply aspects of Truth?

how do we leave out one

in favor of the other

while standing in the land

of the True?

and is not the land of the True,

rather than the home of the 

free and land of the brave

the better place for standing?

And what is true is this:

I am neither brave nor free

Constrained by fears – my

own and others – fettered

by the bondage of past and

present, realities and perceptions 

does the myth of freedom (whatever

that may mean) crumble as dust

at my feet and it is there – in the

dust – that the ions have their

dance – positive . . . negative . . . 

negative . . . positive . . . 

So you want me to tell you of

a future where all will be well?

Here’s the thing – we have to

get there from where we are –

and where we are is the place

where plowshares have not yet

been yielded up from swords

where lions still eat lambs

for supper and call it

lip-smacking, freedom-

loving good

where Jew and Greek,

male and female,

slave and free

still walk the land

differences intact

and yes, we will get to that

promised land

but we must get there

from here

so what is my vision?

a time when and a place where

the people – us – are moved

to get busy and do the work

picking up our hammers

to strike a different chord 

in the heart of the sword

a time when and a place where

the prophets will rip the duct tape

from their mouths and stand and

speak and stand and speak and stand

and speak until – at long last – their

Truth begins an ionic shift into

the change we wish to be 

a time when and a place where

we stop yearning for yesterday

as if it were Eden – it wasn’t

[please, not another fb post about

the great 1950's – do we not notice

that all the faces were white?  I know

some do – for their faces are not there

and as my Grandma used to say – 

there wasn’t that much good in the

good old days]

and start yearning for the reality that

we are to be the enough it was 

created and dreamed to be

back when God stood on

that mountain top and 

looking out, bespoke,

I have a dream . . . 

and she and he is you and me

but you want positive

and I am an ion

and in positive world

I just won’t do

***

Read How the US Turned Three Pacifists Into Violent Terrorists and consider the language usage and how it shaped a reality -- for the three and for us.  Consider the trespasses that need forgiving -- 

The misuse of language is frighteningly effective when people acting non-violently against instruments of violence and the indifference that allows their continuation are labeled by government prosecutors and agencies as guilty of acts tantamount to terrorism and the courts support it.

To my gun-toting friends who insist on open carry laws, etc., I would point out that your rights to carry remain intact while my and others rights to speak and act against bigger weapons are not. This, friends, is the genuine constitutional threat of our time and it is not limited to Democrat or Republican, as all presidents in recent memory claim ever more power under the aegis of our fear of attack.

Why are we not collectively screaming against this overkill of ‘justice’ in the conviction of three peace

activists acting against the nuclear arming of a nation?  Why are we not outraged that what was an act, at most, of ‘trespass’, has been elevated to the crime of sabotage?

The real 'sabotage' was to reveal the weakness of our own mythic self-protections for the lie it is.

If the story of the Emperor who wore no clothes were re-written for our time, the little boy would have been sentenced to prison for the danger he presented of revealing the self-evident truth.

Shame on a government of, by and for a people who can no longer bear such things as truth.

But as a Christian and follower of The One, I have to agree with my government: symbolically hammering a huge piece of equipment is indeed an act of 'sabotage' and it is intended to be: it is sabotaging our lies to ourselves that our safety, our security, our future, reside on the backs of weapons of mass destruction, for they do not. The lie has been revealed for the cruel hoax it has always been. And indeed, if power is to remain power, such revealing must be quashed at all costs.

Well done, good and faithful servants. Sleep well tonight knowing you have stopped the danger presented by three people armed with nothing save Truth and the will to face you head on. Except that you haven't.

Cloud Lightning

Driving home last evening, I was treated to a magnificent sky.  The star of the evening was a lightening show contained totally within one very large billowing cloud that seemed to reach from the mountains to the sky.  Most amazing to me was that the cloud was white and puffy – like the clouds you see on a sunshiny day in summer.

I think I knew that could happen, but I’ve never seen it before.  And it was magnificent.

Trying to find out more about what I saw, I went googling this morning and landed on NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) site, which explains what I was seeing.  In the dense article of explanation (while admitting there is much we still do not understand about lightening), this paragraph caught my attention:

Opposite charges attract one another. As the positive and negative areas grow more distinct within the cloud, an electric field is created between the oppositely-charged thunderstorm base and its top. The farther apart these regions are, the stronger the field and the stronger the attraction between the charges. But we cannot forget that the atmosphere is a very good insulator that inhibits electric flow. So, a HUGE amount of charge has to build up before the strength of the electric field overpowers the atmosphere's insulating properties. A current of electricity forces a path through the air until it encounters something that makes a good connection. The current is discharged as a stroke of lightning.  Lightning basics

All kinds of metaphors come to mind, especially in such a time as this when my country is so divided by its politics, among other things.  ‘Positive’ and ‘negative’ areas grow – oh, yes they do.  The conundrum is that which is positive and which is negative depends on where you’re standing in human terms.  But the beauty of lightening is that ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ are not freighted with moral judgment.

Even better, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ charges are attracted not to their own ‘kind’, but to the other, positive to negative and negative to positive.

I am looking forward to reading Steven Johnson’s new bookFuture Perfect, in which Johnson makes the case for the possibility of progress in a ‘networked age’.  In an interview, Johnson opined that our vast diversity of thoughts and ideas and worldviews is actually a strength rather than a weakness.

While I hold to that view intellectually, emotionally I despair when so few people agree with me and my worldview.  What’s wrong with all of you, I secretly wonder.  Why don’t you see?  Why don’t you get it?

Turns out it’s my intellect rather than my heart that is more right, according to Johnson: the world needs not only Beths but also opposite-of-Beths in order to progress.

Which brings us back to cloud lightening.  Just like the incubated space within the cloud, we live in incubated spaces, largely protected from each other.  We’re ‘free’ to think as we like, so long as we think like each other.  But every now and again, when conditions are just right, your electricity and mine will force a pathway towards each other and the result will be electric!

And that, I think, is a good thing.