Author: connie

Note: Some of my readers took me to task about this post (comments) suggesting that I wasn’t being fair to President Obama.  Perhaps they are right and I was too hard on him.  I was angry.  So bear that in mind, read the comments, and take it all with a grain of salt.

In your speech today at Oslo receiving the Nobel Peace prize you spoke of having a “clear eyed” look at the needs of the world.  But the speech itself made it clear that either you don’t have a “clear eyed” look yourself or you are simply spinning words together to cover a war mongering heart.

You speak of “moral compass”, but I wonder if you have lost yours.

You suggest that the moral principle of all religions, to do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself, should be paramount.  Clearly then, we must want Afghani and Pakistani people to send unmanned drones into our homes and market places, our weddings.

You speak of “enlightened self-interest”.  I see plenty of self-interest on the part of the large corporations and oil industry, the weapons industry, but nothing about this is enlightened.  You dare to speak of “human folly” and do not include yourself, and yet you have become the major “fool” of the corporations.

You speak of the “world rallying around us” in Afghanistan and during the Kuwaiti war.  Like most elites you seem to think that the moneyed people of the world encompass the whole world.  You seem to think that the northern nations are the “world” and to forget the southern ones.  Like so many others, the poorer people of the world are not real to you.  They are the disposable ones.  They haven’t been “rallying around”, but you don’t seem to notice.

And, too, many of us who are a part of those northern nations, many of us who are United States citizens, did not “rally” around the war in Kuwait or the war in Afghanistan.

You speak of civil wars where a government is warring against its own citizens and yet you are willing to continue warring against those same citizens in Afghanistan, and your own citizens in this country.  This morning, interspersed with your speech, was an emergency call by our local food pantry for blankets because there is not enough room in the shelters for all the people who are homeless and cold.   You think it is not warring against your own citizens when you spend trillions of dollars on war and wall street and don’t seem to have enough to provide the basic needs of your own citizens?  (Not to speak of the thousands of people in jail who really just needed a better education, more medical and psychological care, etc., all of which could be paid for by one tenth of the amount of money spent on “defense” in this country.)

You speak of civil wars in countries like Somalia and seem blind to the causes of these wars, the rape of their countries by colonization, the continued rape by large corporations.  If we want the wars to stop we must stop our exploitation of these people.

You speak of us as if we were the “peace keepers” of the world.  The wars we make have nothing to do with keeping peace for the people of the world.  We are nothing but hired mercenaries for the large corporate interests.

You say that peace requires sacrifice!  Yes,  but it is the corporations, the oil industry and the weapons industry who are the ones who need to sacrifice!  Not our young men and women, not the citizens of Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, not our poor, not our education system, not the very well being of the earth itself which you will allow these same major corporations to kill with their wanton disregard of the needs of our planet.

Take a deep breath, everyone — including me!  Let it out with a sigh.  Shake a hand, and then another one, shake everything and do a little babbling to let out those frustrations! (For more on breathing, shaking and babbling to to www.InterPlay.org. )

Want to read more of my “humble” (or  not so humble today!) ideas about how to live in the world?  Go to www.deephum.com to learn more about my books, poetry and music.

(An interlude before we go on discussing constant change):

One of my readers commented on the use of the term “dark” to describe “dark energy” in my last blog.

The term “dark energy” is a scientific one, not my own term.  We can see “light energy” so the energy we cannot see must be “dark energy”.  Scientists’ mathematical calculations say it’s there even though we can’t see it.  There is nothing negative about dark energy.  It is neither good nor bad.  It just is.

However, I am disturbed at the suggestion that darkness might imply evil.  Darkness as a symbol of evil has been used allegorically a lot, but this use has had some very bad consequences.  Much of the racism in this country is enhanced by this false allegory.  Are dark people evil?  No.  Is night evil?  Is winter evil?  No.  These are very important parts of the natural cycle of life on this earth.

I once wrote a song on this subject.  The words are:

In the dark of winter
the bulbs and the seeds
lay deep in the nurturing earth.
It’s a time of renewal,
a time of sleep
awaiting the promise of birth.

In the dark of night
we go to our beds
gather new strength in our dreams.
Its a time of rest,
a time to sleep
awaiting the sun’s morning gleam.

In the dark of her womb
she carries her babe
who grows in life every day.
It’s a time of growth,
of nurturing hope
for our children will show us the way.

Come new life
come out of the dark
rise to the promise of spring.
Come new life
come out of the warmth
see what the new life will bring.

Awaken my soul
rise up from your rest
rise to the promise of  dawn.
Awaken my soul
come out of the warmth
see how the day is reborn.

Nurturing darkness is where we are renewed.  It is the silence, where, if we listen, new ideas, “aha” moments come dropping in.  It seems to me, if  “dark energy” is indeed the connecting force between us (and, again, I leave this idea to my Don’t Know Mind), it is well named.

Next week:  Back to finding an anchor in this constant change!  Or “Don’t fence me in!”

My book, Dancing the Deep Hum, touches on this concept of nurturing darkness as well as many other things.  You can learn more about the book and my other writings at www.deephum.com.  You can purchase Dancing the Deep Hum online at Lulu.com, Amazon, or Powells, or order it from your local bookstore.

Remember the third principle of the Deep Hum Dancers?  Life is constant change, both externally and internally, … bits and pieces of the rest of the universe are constantly moving in and out of our “selves” bringing new information and insight and helping us grow into more connected beings.”

Last week I talked about exchanges of information through conversation, radio, television, reading books, etc. and how these exchanges change us. I talked about physical changes that come through eating, breathing, etc.

This week I want to go a little farther out into space, both literally, and fancifully!

In my book, Dancing the Deep Hum (DDH), I talk about our skin cells constantly sloughing off, becoming the dirt that grows our food, changing and becoming a part of the food we eat.  I say, “If I believe in loving kindness in every cell of my being, will those cells spread the idea of loving kindness to the other beings they join up with?” (DDH 82)

In John Gribbin’s Companion to the Universe we learn that there is, as he says, “more to the Universe than meets the eye.” (104)  That extra stuff out there is referred to as “dark matter” and “dark energy”.   It appears to be flowing through everything!

So here it is, folks, my most way out theory of all!  What if that dark energy is the connecting piece between us – that sense of hum – perhaps even ‘love’?  That feeling we have that there is something more, something we can’t see or touch?  Could information travel from one person or thing to the next through dark energy? (DDH 83)

I’m not alone in this kind of speculation about dark energy.  Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series (recently made into a less than satisfactory film) has some similar speculation.

Could this explain how “prayer” works?  Or unexplainable psychic experiences?  How about when information seems to just drop into our silences, as I spoke about in an earlier blog?  Does this explain why, when a friend of mine desperately needed a pair of sandals, a used pair just the right size showed up in the clothing exchange box in her dorm? (DDH 94)  Is this how another friend of mine always knew who was calling her before her phone rang – years ago, before caller ID?  Once, when another friend handed me a pair of boots, I saw an image of an old fashioned train, seemingly from the low to the ground point of view of a boot.  Afterwards she told me these were the boots she wore on her trip on the Orient Express, a trip I hadn’t known she had taken. (DDH 21)  Was that dark energy at work?

Who knows?  I plan to keep this idea in my “Don’t Know Mind.”  (More about the Don’t Know Mind in later blogs)

Next week:  Trying to find an anchor in this constant change!  Or “Don’t fence me in!”

My book, Dancing the Deep Hum, goes into this concept of the ever-changing self in much more detail.  You can learn more about the book and my other writings at www.deephum.com.  You can purchase Dancing the Deep Hum online at Lulu.com, Amazon, or Powells, or order it from your local bookstore.