S I G N P O S T S A former university professor, Dr. Davison continues his collections of essays on subjects that concern us all.

Human life and its fundamental attributes is that central commitment that provides a pedestal from which we make all of our critical decisions. He lives with his wife, Patricia, in Arizona. V O L 4

SIGN POSTS
A Collection of Essays Vol. IV

D A V I S O N

Don Davison

SIGN POSTS A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS Volume IV

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Other Books by Don Davison An Outline of a Philosophy of the Consciousness of Truth The Concept of Personhood in the Evolutionary Process of Being The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others Sign Posts: A Collection of Essays, Volumes I, II, and III Poetry Thoughts and Feelings Book I Thoughts and Feelings Book II Needles from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Seeds from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Pitch from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Humus from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Sawdust from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Suns rays through the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Shadows beneath the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Cones from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Pollen sifting from the Ponderosas at Zirahuen Reflections from Lucerne Searching Swamps Questions Times Echoes Memories Insistences Splashes Ripples Pebbles

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Collections Murmurings Iris and Other Things Pieces of the Journey Through the Swamps of Time Always Extolling Reflections from Lucerne The Twelfth Hour Pebbles on the Shore (forthcoming)

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SIGN POSTS A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS Volume IV Don Davison

Zirahuen Phoenix, AZ pathtotheself.com DrDavison@pathtotheself.com 2012 by Zirahuen All rights reserved. Published 2012 Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-9858130-1-7 No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and review. Cover photo and author photo by Patricia Davison Special thanks to Louella Holter, and to Tina Rosio, from W.

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Again To Patricia, for everything.

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All of Don Davisons books have water on their covers. Water is one of the most essential attributes of the planet Earth; without it, life as we know it would not exist. It deserves our most considered attention. Davisons collections of poetry all end with Finding Pieces. Many of you have asked, where did the rules for the Game of Life come from? They come from many places and different times. Good hunting!

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CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUME SIGN POSTS I Preface A Human Face A Human Touch A New Point of Departure A Word About Politics Grow Up, America! Immigration A Brief History Iraq The Last War Self-Love Thank You, Artists! The Mediation of Reality The Past Present and Future The Person Wars of the Moment What Is Right? An Agenda for Us All The United Nations xiii 1 7 11 13 23 37 43 49 53 61 67 79 85 91 95

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CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUME SIGN POSTS II Preface Vignette Sufficient Security Its Free! The Ethics of Politics: An Oxymoron or Truth? Democratic Oversight Health Care Our Current Moment A Question for Our Times We Need Enough Truth to Know the Truth Procedural Questions Understanding Our Current Moment Standpoints and a Methodology for Dealing with Postmodern Perspectives Damn It! Ive Had Enough! Take Courage, America! How Much Is Too Much? The Truth Elections and the Health of a Nation A Humanistic Manifesto xiii 1 3 7 11 17 19 33 39 41 45 47 53 57 61 69 75 81

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Splash A Beacon on a Hill All Hands on Deck! Learning to Die Well My Current Status Is A Direction

85 87 89 93 97 99

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CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUME SIGN POSTS III Preface While We Are At It: Health Care 2.0 Kudos and Thank Yous Economics 101 Time, Place, and People The Gift Obama Got Most of It Wrong The Paparazzi A Streaming The Greatest Challenge of Our Time, Part 1 Fear, Facts, and Ideologies The Coming Revolt Thinking Matters Globalization We The People Trust Let Me Speak! The Greatest Challenge of Our Time, Part 2 History Does Not Run Backwards! xiii 1 7 9 15 19 23 27 31 35 45 49 55 57 65 67 75 77 81

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Cultural Blinders Human Life Is a Moving Force Come to the Party! A Visit with the Dancing Muse Bite the Bullet!

83 89 93 99 101

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CONTENTS OF SIGN POSTS IV (this volume) Preface Sandbox Syndrome A New Transparency A Note to the Maryland State Employees, to Wisconsin State Employees, and to All Local, State, and Federal Employees Changing Our Minds It Is Deeply Troubling A Question for Our Times End Game Entertainment Is a Strange Bed Partner How Often Do We Need to Be Reminded? In All of This Justice Nothing Is Free! One Wonders The Arrogance of Tyrants The Drivel Called News Where Are We? Who Said That? Medias Gift Food for Thought
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5 9 13 15 17 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 39 43 47 49 53

Derivatives Frustration Reiterated Looking for That Thing Our Time So Politically Correct Now Wait a Minute! We Are a World of Laws Freedom of the Spirit An Observation A Perfect Storm I Am an I Am!

55 59 61 63 67 69 71 75 79 81 85

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AUTHORS NOTE I am primarily a poet; these essays are intended to help flesh out various themes and topics found in my poetry. Where I feel it is appropriate, I might refer you, dear reader, to a particular poem that further elucidates certain thoughts or sentiments. These and other materials are marked with an asterisk. If not otherwise noted, such inclusions are my own work.

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PREFACE Sign Posts are collections of essays written to shed some light on my personal thinking. Over the years, students and others have asked that I write some small pieces on what I felt about this or that. In the following working pieces called postings, I will attempt to share some of the fundamental points of departure that have guided my thinking and stimulated my searching in my various fields of interest. These pieces will be augmented with the new and intriguing that I find as I continue to discover the richness of the human garden and the unfathomable depths of the human experience. I believe that as a species, we must act in love (in that Frommian manner: with an active concern for all life and growth) by operating and proceeding with knowledge, care, responsibility, and respect while we dedicate ourselves to growth as self and circumstances change. We must live with the awareness that a sanctifying process is always underway (from A Word About Politics, in Sign Posts I).

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SANDBOX SYNDROME There is petulance in the Sandbox. Is this where we finally find ourselves? What cultural degradations have led us to this moment? From inane conversations to screaming obnoxious obscenities, we wander in, out, and through the events of our times. How unbelievably shallow, nave, and inconsequential are the comments of many of the pundits? We wouldnt be stretching our commentary if we were to call them downright stupid. We are now reaping the crops of chaos from the last two generations of the lost. Year after year for the last forty years we have allowed ourselves to slide into an existential morass stirred by the ladle of information and misinformation. Medias penchant for rushing just to throw stuff against the wall has shamed us all. With an abased sense of Yes I can! we have watched and listened to less-than-seasoned discussions using less-thanreasoned truths. Decorum, that pleasant shrouding purpose, has vanished from our stage. Who will rise to grab the reigns, and with a character dedicated to purpose, slow the cultural wagon to make the corner of the fast-approaching bend in our national road, and in so doing lead us toward a horizon of mature and reasoned effort? We have gained an understanding of the value of human life (for the most part), yet we have allowed children to dominate the stage. Yes, we all know how important they are, yet they are only part of the cast of players in the grand human drama. The vagaries of the human presence are such that it is essential that there be a critical mass of life experience before we enter upon the threshold of raising children. Fathoming the buts and if thens of our reasoned efforts takes a certain measure
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of lived-in space/time. There is no substitute for the maturing process being over time. While children especially in our current moment of electronic toys and tools seem to have a get-it-quick (understand which buttons to push, touch or screen to swipe) attribute, they lack the sophistication of the application so essential to understanding the cause and effect of our integration of mechanics and electronics as we choose to have them participate in our daily lives. We are still, as a society, sufficiently aware of the fact that we dont let 8, 10, or 12-year-old children drive automobiles, fathoming a real absolute need to accept personal and communal responsibility. And yet we seem to be unable to realize there is a difference between whining, pestering, misbehaving, misunderstanding, and what we have come to understand as knowing. And now we feel as though we must add really knowing. Only one of the afore-mentioned activities should be allowed to continue into adulthood and that is: knowing, really knowing, what we think we know. Isnt there a paradox here? We currently have an abundance of individuals who look like adults but dont speak or act like adults. If we follow the reasoning that the most obvious denizens of the human circumstance are fear, anger, guilt, and false pride and that they flow from fear (the most primitive) to anger (the most visible) to guilt (the most burdensome) to false pride, (the everlasting need to knowingly lie about the known), then it follows that once we enter the vicious circle of fear, anger, guilt, and false pride, we are playing a losing hand. You may be interested in other volumes of Sign Posts. These are collections of essays that address these issues. http://amzn.to/fgeCeV

A NEW TRANSPARENCY As the new transparency peels away ever more layers of the human onion, we, along with the technology of the age, will continue to cover over ourselves with a vast array of trivia and uncover more of the essentials. Some we will not understand and some we will dismiss. As we turn in our intellectual and spiritual wanderings we will fumble and grasp after the ridiculous and sublime. And as the pace will seem to slip faster and ever faster, we will take less and less time to own the burdens, the opportunities, and the responsibilities of our new-found and ever more important freedoms. The double-edged sword of truth cannot be wielded with the sanctimony of youth or the ignorance of the uninformed. It will take practiced masterful strokes to seize the necessary and to make straight the way. We see how many are called and how few really choose to assume the mighty mantle of freedom. There will be many who will choose by default or by design to attempt to escape the obligations of choice as more and more of us seek to play with our cell phones and tablets instead of reaching out to walk and talk with family and friends. We stand on the shore of a new world and we are at risk of setting sail without ourselves. Stand and hold fast to the gifts of the centuries! Touch one another and say, Yes to life! Yes to all the sacred acts of sharing.

A NOTE TO THE MARYLAND AND WISCONSIN STATE EMPLOYEES, AND TO ALL LOCAL, STATE, AND FEDERAL EMPLOYEES These are the facts at hand: Public employees have been stealing from the public for as long as they have been earning more than the private sector workers doing the same job. So lets say that their COLA (cost of living adjustment) for a retirement program appreciably larger than their private counterparts wont be paid for an estimated 19 years. They are queuing up (along with a lot of other state employees across the nation) with other thieves to march, rant, rave, and scream while demonstrating in some public space. What they should be doing is getting really honest and saying something like this: I have finally been caught stealing from my neighbors really all of the taxpayers and I deserve a prison sentence for grand larceny. However, I am being given no prison time and no felony conviction, and Im only going on some kind of probation for about 19 years (the amount of time it will likely take to recoup sufficient resources to pay them a COLA). Ancillary effects of their larceny would be all of the other expenditures that were not made because of their budgetary theft: highway/infrastructure improvement along with a long list of other well-deserved improvements like education and healthcare delivery and prevention programs. Patrick Buchanans 2011 book, Suicide of a Superpower (pp. 2728), cites Dennis Cauchons lead story on the front page of USA Today (Nov. 10, 2010):

Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recessions first 18 months and that is before overtime pay and bonuses are counted. Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time in pay and hiring during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.1 When the recession began, the Department of Defense had 1,868 civilian employees earning $150,000. By December 2009, Defense had 10,100 employees earning $150,000 or more. When the recession began, the Department of Transportation had one person earning $170,000. By 2010, Transportation had 1,690 employees earning above $170, 000.2 Between 2005 and 2010, the number of federal workers earning more than $150,000 soared tenfold, and it doubled in the first two years of the Obama administration, during the worst recession since the Great Depression.3 The three congressional districts north and west of the District of Columbia, Marylands Eighth, and Virginias Eleventh and Eighth, are among the ten most affluent congressional districts in America. And of the ten major metropolitan areas in the nation, the D.C. metro area ranks first in per capita income.4 The financial crisis was the work of Washington and Wall Street, but Washington never saw better days. As USA Today reported in August 2010, in the first decade of the twenty-first century U.S. Government workers left their fellow Americans in the dust. Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a
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Dennis Cauchon, For Feds, More Get 6-Figure Salaries, USA Today, Dec. 11, 2009. 2 Ibid. 3 Dennis Cauchon, More Fed Workers Pay Tops $150,000: Number Doubled Under Obama, USA Today, Nov. 10, 2010. 4 Lena H. Sun, D.C. Area Tops in Well-being Survey, Washington Post, Nov. 10, 2010.

row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade. Federal civil servants [emphasis added hardly civil or servants] earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation. The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.1 Remarkable. U.S. government workers, who enjoy the greatest job security of any Americans, receive twice as much in annual pay and benefits as the average American raises average about 2% per year for workers as a group (for federal employees).2 Surely we will all hang separately or all hang together. Remember, History Does Not Run Backward.3 It is always better to Stand Still in Silence in order to see the truth of the now.4 And then to Own It Now!5 Of course, doing the work of building a character with integrity would have already sorted out True/Not True! and Mine/Not Mine!6 if anyone had been exuding any measure of honesty. The information below is just a small paragraph from the Tea Party Budget. (Nov. 17, 2011, Washington, D.C.) 1. Balances the budget in four years, and keeps it balanced, without tax hikes. 2. Closes a historically large budget gap, equal to almost onetenth of our economy.

1 Dennis Cauchon, Federal Pay Tops Private Workers Compensation Gap Doubled in Decade, USA Today, Aug. 10, 2010. 2 Patrick Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower, is from St. Martins Press, 2011. 3 Sign Posts: A Collection of Essays, Vol. III, pp. 81-82. 4 From The Rules in The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others, 2011 rev. ed., pp. 173174. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid.

3. Reduces federal spending by $9.7 trillion over the next 10 years, as opposed to the Presidents plan to increase spending by $2.3 trillion. 4. Shrinks the federal government from 24 percent of GDP a level exceeded only in World War II to about 16 percent, in line with the postwar norm. 5. Stops the growth of the debt, and begins paying it down, with a goal of eliminating it within this generation. To achieve these goals, our plan, among other things: 6. Repeals Obama Care in toto. 7. Eliminates four Cabinet agencies Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD and reduces or privatizes many others, including EPA, TSA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. 8. Ends farm subsidies, government student loans, and foreign aid to countries that dont support us luxuries we can no longer afford. 9. Saves Social Security and greatly improves future benefits by shifting ownership and control from government to individuals, through new SMART Accounts. 10. Gives Medicare seniors the right to opt into the Congressional health care plan. 11. Suspends pension contributions and COLAs for Members of Congress, whenever the budget is in deficit. 12. To the above 11, I would add: A public audit of the Federal Reserve.1

Some of these references are from other texts by Don Davison: Essays: http://amzn.to/fgeCeV The Game of Life: http://amzn.to/fOrqEi

CHANGING OUR MINDS That great Salmonic1 gift of our natal-times seeps to the surface of our pores and we sense the sweetness of serenity or the stinging of an open wound. In either case, our memory stores serve us, for the most part, in good stead. The former provides us with an open disposition, the latter a cowering sour disposition, which many people try to cover over with a jovial, humorous shell. This can produce a lackluster life one that we can choose not to have. The benefit of discomfort in life is that it can provide a motivating force for change, for growth, or a way for an act of courage. Natures laws prevail; to avoid mental, physical, and spiritual stagnation, we must be open, we must move we must grow. Too often we become addicted to perspectival points of departure that are inconsistent with our new-now. We are no longer a wounded child, a nave youth, and the world has changed, it is always morphing. For most of us our experiential bank has provided us with a sufficient critical mass of life experience, and we can now categorize events and relate our growing understanding to a wider worldview. This process, however, can be interrupted when we experience a disruptive happening a personal tragedy, a divorce, the death of a loved one, loss of employment, a move into a new circumstance, retirement there are many possibilities. When changes such as these occur, we need to be especially careful not to retrench ourselves in some archaic, childish, youthful, incomplete, standpoint. Actually the process of maturation is an exercise in heroics. We must knowingly exercise our capacity to choose what we perceive is currently in our best interest. Notice, I do not say
1 Salmon return to the same creek and the same shoals from where they were born after being at sea for some 7 years.

this is an easy thing to do hence the need for heroics. If we have managed to develop a dynamic growth profile, actually seeking the new and interesting, and have incorporated this new information into an active fulfilling life, we can then travel the road of life with a disposition of cheerfulness, excitement, expectation, hope, and love. If we have not, catastrophes of every ilk lurk in the shadows and haunt us. We can then develop a fear-driven, pessimistic disposition that always translates into anxiety and eventually is expressed as anger, even rage. When as an adult our core beliefs, some of which are caught in an adolescent intransigence, are challenged by having our candidate defeated in an election, or worse yet, having a piece of legislation become a law that we really dont want to obey, we have a very difficult time adjusting. It is wrong! They are liars! become the loops of our self-speak. And no matter how long the monologue of our mind continues, life still goes on. Now, it may be true that they are wrong and liars; it may also be true that the world has hidden a truth for some time and we are just now becoming aware of it. Grow or you lose; if you lose, those around you also lose, and the world loses.1 This, for some people, is very unsettling. Some of us have lived for many years supporting a party, a belief, and when we are challenged to reassess (and when we choose to reassess) there is a subtle awareness that something does not quite fit. We are being nudged by a synthesizing mind and a moving spirit that forever seeks a greater expansion of our logic. When this happens, the critical mass of our experience may be at odds with the facts of the day. We need to be courageous enough to follow the path toward a greater truth. Even though this may mean we have held on to
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You may wish to check The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others, which discusses at length the positive and negative consequences of perspectival decisions. (http://amzn.to/fOrqEi)

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some perception of reality, even defended it rabidly, this should have been our first hint that something was not quite right, that we may have been wrong for some time. This can translate into self-flagellation, social embarrassment, depressive funk or malaise. At this juncture of our life we need to suck it up and move on. No one knows it all. Its the learning and the growing that matters most. It is what makes us feel comfortable with ourselves and gains us some measure of respect from others and for self. Everyone admires the honest growing person. Isnt that who we all would like to be? It has to do with the giving of the gift, the gift of one, back to the Giver. It makes us eminently human, humble, and awe inspired. The omnipresent challenge for us, as we maintain a fidelity to our maturation, is to reassess the veracity of our memories. The yeses, the sentiments, the fathomings of a youthful mind, although potentially able to partially parse an ever-changing reality, need to be exercised in order to be augmented as we grow in our awareness of a larger picture and a more dynamic worldview. As we pass through time and space, we accumulate a deeper appreciation of our relationship to our self and with our surrounding circumstances. It is this growth-in-time, the integrated accumulation and application of new knowledge, that may seem to be a flowing, but actually is a series of quantum leaps that in retrospect seem to flow. This is what we call maturation. It is in those times of discomfort that we can choose to exercise our courage and make that leap of faith that always leads us toward a deeper relationship to self and others. It is a time of great becoming; an old foreboding is being confronted by a new spirit of adventure. A feeling of dissonance seeks a resolution. This is the process of our becoming who we are now.

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IT IS DEEPLY TROUBLING It is deeply troubling to witness the conversations of so many, whether they are in media or in politics, presenting such uninformed and adolescent prognostications. The U.S. citizenry and I use that word citizen advisedly as so few participate by voting in our Great Republics elections, dare I say soap operas is, for the most part, poorly informed about the goings-on of the Republic or the global whole. We have too much ignorance and too many adults acting like ranting adolescents. We have taken our eyes, minds, and hearts off the ball and this has belittled our spirits. For the last three generations we have allowed a pioneering courageous people to morph into entitlement-expecting drones and consumers par excellence. We have allowed ourselves to be saddled with legislation designed to appease and to dull our perceptions of an innate need to pay attention or die1 we have turned into a nation of 50/50. We have an electorate that is divided into takers and doers, whiners and screamers. Too many choose to wait upon governmental largesse in a downward-spiraling, anxietyridden, misplaced effort to sustain some passive participation in lifes great challenges. Others co-opt their needs by continuing to look for offers of something for nothing. We must all understand: Nothing is free!2 Politicians who colonize a piece of the representative turf by offering pork to their entitlementaddicted constituents are the elected thieves of the day, and they are stealing more than money. They are stealing our personal sense of well-being; they are stealing our very souls.

All of these subjects are contained in essays in the Postings volumes. http://amzn.to/fgeCeV 2 Ibid.

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A nations security, in every arena, is based upon an honest well-founded commitment to satisfying real needs in real time. Overspending for anything at any time is undeniably the wrong thing to do. We need to stand still in silence1 in order to regain our sense of self a self that understands that only in an honest self-ownership, exuding a passionate commitment to self-reliance, self-respect, and self-responsibility, will we remain a vibrant entity in a nation of freedom-loving citizens of a great republic. This will demand our utmost and sincere effort.

Ibid.

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A QUESTION FOR OUR TIMES Will the young mixed-puppy of a culture be seduced by the old corrupt behemoths? The electoral jury is hung at 49/51 and tipping to the more-than side of enough even too much. So tell me, when the youthful exuberance for the fashionable and the branded-moment wears off, will we fall victims to the corruption of soul where the waves of avarice roll across the mainland? Will there finally be more than a few who will say, Enough of your tasteless shoving of corruption down the throats of your own constituents in your all-out attempt to do it to everyone! Have you finally torn off enough faces?1

This poem will be in Pebbles on the Shore, a forthcoming collection.

1 Torn off faces is in FIASCO: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader by Frank Partnoy.

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END GAME Im sick and tired of hearing and seeing the paltry fare on the so-called mainstream media. What is the end game? What great prognosticators of history have always known the outcome? The more we know and the more we plan, the higher the probability that we can come closer to an intended outcome. Yet predicting a timetable in the human realm is very difficult. How idiotic are the complaints of those who have insights and abilities but do not do. As the pendulum swings or the coiled spring moves, we, the social animal, manifest the full spectrum of human behavior. It is always the case, in the extremes of excess, that we have music unbounded by the human voice, electronic accompaniment that knows no limits, the clattering of syncopated rap, and the unbridled repetitious screamings, ad nauseam, of forced words (lyrics are many times left wanting). We have too much of this and not enough of that. We have cultural faces that have lost their way. The mechanical and electrical, with computer-assisted forms, create seamless realities that mirror myth in the bionics as well as the robotics of the day. And so too, in the films of the moment, we are thrilled, intrigued, and assaulted. A few of us may still be aware of the intricate simplicities of a cryptogeniclayered stillness where blue-green algae plays out its hidden purpose. When we parse the cultural mores of primitive peoples, which in retrospect arent so primitive, and the so-called sophisticates of the planet, who with time havent proven to be so sophisticated, we find it has been difficult to decipher the intent of thoughtless activity. In the face of this onslaught, many of us still live seeking truth in the appropriate balance of too little or
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too much. The great philosophers and theologians, those who have spoken to us over vast sweeps of human efforts, have sent clear messages. The great questions of the ages have always been: What are we really? What should we really do? In all of this, where come the shoulds and should-nots of our current endeavors? How do we, in our glorious freedomseeking expressions, take the time to sort out our dos and donts? Have we lost that reflective wisdom, a wisdom distilled from purposeful repose that bequeaths communal behavior so essential to the well-being of us all? Has unbridled freedom forgotten the young and the old? Where are those cohesive patterns of shared responsibility that give structure to human societies? It seems we have netted the globe with our pixilated newfound fancies and foibles, painting the breadth and depth of freedoms that pay scant attention to the subtle differences of age, other faiths, other cultures, and the sensitivities of honestly being human. Countries with the wherewithal saturate global media and markets as the oppressed and maligned seek sustenance from their persecutors and their poverty. They want, for the most part, to have, to experience the good life or what they perceive to be the good life, without sufficient understanding of the debt-ridden, anxiety-plagued, relationship-strained backdrop that is of necessity coming to the forefront of life in the fast lane. And all this happens with a language that has grown coarse, even vulgar, and the shrieking of those deft but not-so-deft electronic intrusions jingle/jangle or vibrate as they punctuate and pulsate us out of our present. Where have all the children gone? To texting every one, to a prolonged adolescence shared with an almost mature culture that in its extended exposure to noxious onslaughts of space
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and time, lives seeking escapes in petty pursuits, miming their childrens capricious antics and lack of responsibility. We need a dedication to purpose that seeks to grasp and hold our visions and our dreams, a place where necessitys integrity births patterns of behavior that mirror expressions of a Divine partnership. Who minds the hearth and store, from where the sighs of evermore? What forgotten meadow jaunts slip silently from memorys haunts? When did we begin our slides from aged cultural evening tides, where mind and body sat and wrought, making things by hands, not bought? Personal integrity and a sense of personal responsibility are the essential ingredients of a mature and purposeful human presence, a presence wrapped into a reverence for the timeliness of the organic and the prudence and patience of a mature human life. The ancient art of delayed gratification provides moments of reflection that can give sufficient repose to reconsider our intentions and our motivations as they relate to honest expressions and actions of a healthy responsible self, as well as creating and maintaining complementary relationships with others.

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ENTERTAINMENT IS A STRANGE BED PARTNER The seductive muse facilitates the creative genius of us all and sends our hearts and minds toward the heights of our aspirations and the depths of our anxieties, even fears. As a species we have a penchant for the exciting, the unknown, for chance. We have the curiosity of a sharp wit and we enjoy fathoming that which is within, that which lies ahead, and that which is probable, even possible. This process all takes place in every home of the human family, from the individual to any group of any size. The people of the social whole are now connected and connecting. The Social Media of our current moment is driving a vast information gathering and exchange: Who thinks what and who is sharing what with whom. This sharing is, indeed, a subject of great interest that can carry positive or negative synergisms; remember, everything lies along the statistical curve of our predilections. Belonging to ones self, operating with integrity of purpose with those time-tested truths in which any and all mature societies place their trust, is paramount for every life-affirming person and culture. To have the essential freedoms to live in a culture that demands a form of entertainment that plays at the edges of danger, risk, exultation, and yes, even reverence, has set the culture at large up for an incessant diet of highs and lows. Too many of us have become accustomed to an inhuman pace and a thoughtless inhumane brutality. The continual exposure to an ever-increasing onslaught of data has eroded, elevated, and bastardized the sensitivities of the general population. The coarsening of language and the acceptance of this by the media moguls and the educators (I use this
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term advisedly) at our educational institutions does not deliver or demand sufficient commitment from producers, professors, our teachers, our students, or our citizens. A sense of a dedicated search for truths that complement our human condition is a must. Without these focused commitments the culture of our nation is at risk. Our teachers must be the very best we can provide and our students must be challenged and kept in school until they can perform at some given level. The capacity to read and do fundamental math is a necessity. A cavalier attitude toward our current cultural moment so laden with navet is not only unacceptable, it is catastrophic. This country simply cannot survive without an enlightened citizenry. We must teach our nations history and the worlds history, along with geography and some mathematics if that isnt asking too much? And along with the foregoing we need to add the fundamentals of logics and ethics, as well as teaching an appropriate participation in the management of this great republic. Every child should have at least a diploma and then move on to some form of training that prepares them to participate in the work force of this twenty-first-century nation/world. When a people choose to escape from freedom they have closed the gate to their freedom, their future, and the future of humankind.

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HOW OFTEN DO WE NEED TO BE REMINDED? Human behavior, when seduced to complacency, seeks having things instead of doing life. Those who do not exude integrity of purpose to their circumscribed now, seek comfort and recognition in some branded moment as if something inanimate possesses a living intent. It is Pants on the ground, looking like a fool all over again. A self-coincidental pride one that takes an ownership role in what is eternally and existentially already there is the only honest response to a life that is already here. When people become personally responsible for their own lives, there will naturally be a sifting and a winnowing of abilities: Mine is mine and yours is yours. Wishing and whining will not alter the course of history. And if there is a case in which a person or persons cannot do for themselves, then there must be both individual and corporate assistance in a case-by-case, reviewed-over-time manner always remaining close enough to the source of the need to be able to garner sufficient facts to understand that the reality of the moment leads to a greater understanding of the facts of the matter. Note: I did not say governmental assistance except in those extreme natural or man-made catastrophes that merit participation by local, state, and federal entities, and then only in a timely fashion with a beginning and an end. Waiting for bureaucracies to respond to a life-and-death need only works in the exception: a courageous, smart-enough, loving friend who knows what is going on, the police, the firemen, or EMTs respond well to real emergencies.

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There is that childhood story about crying wolf too often. When did we begin to accept that miming childish behavior would merit someone elses attention?

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IN ALL OF THIS In all of this, we have pursued in our wonderment an omniscient and omnipotent God as we have tried to divine the laws of the universe. In all of our heroic efforts and mad machinations, we have also presented to each other the heights and the depths of our souls. To what and to whom do we owe the sum substance of our existential presence? What must we do and what can we do to demonstrate a thankfulness of purpose for ourselves and all of our brothers and sisters, who have gone before, are here now, and are yet to come? Surely there can be some extending of a helping hand. When we see someone stumble and fall we can assist them in righting themselves. Where there is an open wound, we can place herbs and the miracles of the moment on it and bind it up. When there is thirst we can offer drink. We have finally seen the whole. We have at last crossed over the threshold of our future and entered the house of one, and it is ours. Does this mean that the whole is now a Kum-ba-yah moment? Obviously not! Although there will be new opportunities to have many more of these feel-good sharing moments, there is that ever-present danger of the maligned and of nature itself. An eternal vigilance will always be our mandate. Everything is an ending and a beginning. Our challenge is to always see both, while presenting information in facts and figures, in sound and picture, of our births and deaths, to always point a way to start again, always again, to a new beginning. In the course of human events we have done so much, we have learned so much. In simple gestures we have defined the heroics of humanity and in hurried hubris we have turned our backs
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on each other. The shouts of joy have been heard and the cries of pain and sorrow were sometimes left in the silence of misty vales. We are now in a new age, one in which we can hear more and more people and see more and more people. Our challenge is to be ready to be magnanimous and ready to defend the truth of our freedoms.

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JUSTICE The idea of justice comes from before the current moment as a gift of the accumulated depths of history. Our ownership and the sharing of this gift is a heroic application in the here and now because justices need always comes when most of us are already otherwise engaged. We must, when this happens, always hang onto ourselves, yet preserve historys gift. We do this by entering into a relationship that occurs in time from a close-enough-to and far-enough-away-from so that the meting out of justice, its spirit and its letter, forms a bonding of the human potential by merging from a past of memories to a future of possibilities by maintaining a commitment to an arc of human behavior that is understood to show us the way into the now of our lives. We are in deep need of an existential perspective that allows us to know that in the administration of justice, we are following an order that complements the human understanding of an organic logic of if/then that contributes to a reasoned construct for a civil society. Ideals are always exhibited from a behind by those of us who are not quite there or here and to others who are already someplace else. That there is also a malevolent they is obvious. That they will always come from the ever-renewing underbelly of humanity is also obvious. The only way for the rest of us to live is to be ever-vigilant and do the right thing. To which must be added: Get ahead of the evil ones by always carefully watching the movement of the species. We must become the other they. There will always be the yin and yang of Good and Evil. We must remember that they (the evil ones) are always more than one and they will always continue to come and come. To target them we must manifest,
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in the present, the eternal ideals in our character and our deeds, ideals that bridge the paths of lifes purpose from one always to another. It is to the we that we owe our I. And in this vein, it is always to the young that we must dedicate our most loving efforts. As evil can be let in, it can also be driven out. We must stay connected in that close enough of the psychophysical-spiritual template to communicate in the many languages of love which are the essential life-affirming actions. Justice means that our lives must always be a yes.

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NOTHING IS FREE! To begin with, we have become the knowing species. We are the I am! kind. With these two words we place ourselves in context with It all. We come from the inside out and we live from the outside in. Any person who is not self-aware is a danger/burden to self and others. A person who does not fathom relationship cannot survive. We are all tied together. If we could only remember ligare / litigated (to bind to), we would do more with less and have many fewer layers as well as lawyers. Armed with the fact that the truth belongs to itself (it doesnt matter whether we know it, like it, or even understand it), we are obligated once we become aware of it to own it to the degree that we are able. We are individuals, the indivisible ones the undivided, the visible and the invisible. We are the It of it all. And still we wander in our self-imposed ignorance. Opportunities abound for us to understand what we are and who we are, yet we war, lie, cheat, and steal from ourselves and all others. REMEMBER: NOTHING IS FREE. It is either ours or not ours.1 Anyone who does not have an ethic of the environment has no self-ethic either. Again, as always, the reciprocal is obvious. When we choose to neglect the intricacies of our space/time, we violate ourselves and all others; without the others we would not even be here. We are of a pair of members of our own kind. We must then although there can be times when we dont like them love them. We must also remember: They can choose not to love us; however, we cannot choose not to
You may wish to see The Rules in The Game of Life: A Manual for Executives and Others. You may also wish to see Its Free! In Sign Posts Vol. II, both by Don Davison. Or simply visit pathtotheself.com
1

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love them even if it is to isolate/contain/eliminate them. We must remember there is that forever greater good for which we would lay down our very lives: a brother, a sister, a cause. And yet here we are portending so much in our nave egocentric fog that in our navel gazing we see so little of that which stands before us that to which we owe our very existence. And so it is that a must becomes our primeval pedestal. We must come to a fundamental standpoint from which we judge our participation in existence itself we and it are one. We come from something as a something. And although life is a gift, it is not anything that can be called free; it must be recognized and owned personally, responsibly. How could it be that we have drifted so far from the wisdom of the ages? What myopic boredom has beset us all? If we do not tend the vines, we can make no wine. We are and have been cursed and blessed with technological know-how that while created by us is not fully understood by us. In a dynamic relationship we must know that there will always be something else. We must know that there will always be both intended and unintended consequences. The overriding truth is that we do not know (really well) how to maintain a focused connection to both halves of the individual (indivisible duality) that is ourselves. In that simple truth: We have lost touch with our self and consequently each other. The only way forward for us is to begin again, to be born again into ourselves as a conscious self-awareness that assumes responsibility for itself just as soon as we are able. In the parlance of the day: In that focused state of self-awareness we need to say what we mean, mean what we say and be all that we can be.1
1

See Frank Luntz, Words That Work, http://amzn.tc/m4v78g and the U.S. Armys recruitment slogan.

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ONE WONDERS Just how smart are we? Well there are those times. We have created almost incomprehensible works of art. We have learned to travel far and wide. We have built tall, and many, many buildings. We have advanced our understanding of ourselves. Medicine is and has for the most part been miraculous. We have visited the moon and have trips planned to other planets; so far so good. Yet there is that underbelly the snakes of our kind. They have subjected and ignored some of us, at times many of us. But as with all things, they roll upon themselves and sooner or later they crash upon the shores of our enlightenment. We have found ways to speak to each other and send pictures or videos of our faces to each other. We can now attest to one another our universal aspirations. Bigots, abusers, beware! Tribes no longer need to be led. They can lead themselves. Yes, there are still those remnants of tribal groups, cohorts of the maligned and ignorant, yet, for the most part we can now choose to be free to love one another in that sacred space of magnanimity. And yet we also know there will be some retribution along with reconciliation. Dictators what a word that is. Who really thinks they can now be the sole voice giving proclamations? How silly can some remain? As we implode in the twenty-first century we can promise the strongmen (anything but) and the malevolent and they range from superimposed military leaders to wrongfully elected despots that they will have short tenure. Case in point: Gaddafi was fox-smart (more about this later on) but Kid Daffy. He will serve as an interesting case in point of
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fact. Yes, he garnered around himself those who in their misplaced hope thought they could forever share in his stolen largesse. (Military leaders and hired thugs beware.) He could not sustain a floating ship on this new sea of freedom. He was deposed, and those who have chosen to stand with him will be disposed and punished. You cannot slay the innocent and merit accolades. Foxes have eaten enough of the chickens, goats, and sheep of humanity. He tried to buy allegiances; it only worked for a little while in the greater theater of human events. Summer is over. They all will reap what they have sown. No one can now stand back and watch, no one can continue to raise poppies and think it doesnt matter. Atlas will shrug his mighty shoulders in the person of each freedom-seeking soul. The time has come, we are now meeting one another face-to-face and we cannot ignore the sameness of our kind. The lists grow quickly. Courts in every land are convicting the thieves and murderers of our age. The Soroses of an age are dancing for the last time as they gaze stupefied at their own grotesque reflections. The new wind has caught our mighty sails. We will follow on to that new shore. From a righted ship and a steady keel with willed hand upon the helm, we will make straight the way of the mighty ship of state.

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THE ARROGANCE OF TYRANTS Could the private sector be doing more to meet our social responsibilities? Beyond any doubt they could. Our current cultural circumstance is marred by decades of a reliance on a false understanding of the responsibility of governmental infrastructure to take care of societys social ills. This failure to understand the limited social responsibility of local, state, and federal governmental infrastructures is also colored by a dishonest political focus on tax dollars that could be used to coopt the electorate and the political process. By using tax dollars to remove social responsibilities from the communities at large, politicians have colonized political turf by offering entitlements to given groups in exchange for their continued support. That this has tainted both political parties is beyond any doubt. It has become the modus operandi of both parties. And the longer a politician has stayed in office the more pork barreling became the way of taking care of financial backing as well as vote collecting. The entire process has become a corrupt morass of programs designed to self perpetuate and to gobble up tax dollars as the sense of quid pro quo became the operational status of every form of government. Some politicians have become very good at bringing home the bacon, and those individuals and groups who are the recipients see only a game of take as much as you can from the governmental coffers and let the rest of the country be damned. This coarsening of our social understanding and commitments has also become a cancer on our cultural well-being. We mouth platitudes while we rob from our neighbors and defraud the international community. That we are a prosperous nation is
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true. Growth in prosperity in the particular, and general wealth hid from most this mounting political disease. Too many decades have slipped by while too many citizens have turned their backs on the political scene. Corruption has become a way of doing business. There is a need to educate the individual and corporate world with a deeper understanding of charity. Yes, I know that some already provide a considerable portion of our economic movement, and yet we need to maintain a higher level of focus so that idiotic underlings, bureaucrats of every ilk appointed, elected, or hired of local, state, and federal governments, wont spend their time advocating that a people (a culture) create and maintain programs that could be funded by other more efficient methods. We have finally learned that where two or more are gathered in their names there is usually calamity and thievery. The propensity for avarice, when one sits on the banks of the public river watching money flowing by, is too much for most. Salaries are paid for by others impersonal others. In reality others of their own kind: neighbors and friends, especially at the local levels. This is why absolute transparency and limited governmental involvement is essential. Too long and too much are always harbingers of fated circumstances. There is a new poetry in the fact that material and technical advancements have created more and more transparency in all of the worlds societies. Problems of all kinds can now be uncovered and shared with almost anyone in a timely fashion. What do major corporations give to charity; 2%, 5%, 10%? Every corporation and individual should give something, perhaps the biblical tithe as an average over any five-year

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period.1 A five-year period would provide for moments of expansion where another focus is needed and yet the goal is to average to a 10% commitment. We always owe our success to others something politicians think they understand and yet most dont have a clue. There is an ocean of difference between a statesman or stateswoman and a liar and a thief. Collusion becomes lost in selfrhetoric. Who will know? is the favorite question of the really stupid, followed closely by the I deserve it! of the ignorant elitists. In their inflated sense of self-purpose and intent they choose to lie again and further blacken their souls and the souls of others. Nothing is done in isolation. Through the new transparency of our time, there now are available more facts and figures of the whole world and these will continue to expose an ever-increasing number of people to more and more information about everyone and everything. When we turn the corner of yours is mine, we move to some secular indifference that removes us from ourselves. We must always be an I that exists in the context of a we. There is a great expansion in our self-perception when we come to know that respect is only possible when we realize that what we recognize in another is a reflection of oneself and in that there is going on around us a great awakening to a more complete world. We see mine / yours / his / hers / its / the alls as a profound beauty of great significance without which we are not human. Beneficence / munificence is the caring movement, birthing an awe of understanding, that melts from sky to
1 We would do well to note the recent group of billionaires who have given substantial portions of their wealth to charity. Continuing this trend is to be the human person, exercising a wisdom that knows that there is always a sameness that is bestowed upon us all. Some will always be in need, the poor will always be with us, and it is to them that we must maintain a faithful commitment to a well-being that allows for sufficient opportunity for work and for pleasure. From the depths and breadths of humanity come the geniuses of every age. Allowing for an expression of the fullness of the human spirit is forever our most precious charge.

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earth and back again as an intention of yesness manifesting the sacred of us all. We must maintain a fidelity to our whole self in the relationship of divine providence that cradles us and all that surrounds us. This is what many of those who have served long terms in politics cannot fathom. They colonize a turf that is not theirs it is ours. They come to feel entitled to their posts because we have chosen to ignore them. Then they see power as privilege and they choose to use their positions to garner favors and to exploit the governments largesse, a largesse that they use to buy the votes of the less-thans and the more-thans, those who have come to believe that theirs is a station of entitlements and they are reaping only the benefits of their stations. They are, after all, worth more than their different brothers and sisters. In their stated efforts to redistribute wealth, they take their share and feel so full of integrity that they cant see, as they plunder the federal coffers, that they steal from everyone, themselves included. There is in this mutual destruction a mental muddle that says, If I am a good thief, I deserve a larger share. This is the hubris of the so-called elite perceptions of reality. They possess an arrogance that feeds upon itself and manifests itself in their deprecations of others as they steal from others without any remorse. It is for this reason that they are to be arrested and punished for their crimes. It is for this reason that they are to be turned out of public office, never to be eligible to hold another elected position. They have stolen enough of our resources and time. They are the true usurpers of the common good. The time has come to throw out almost every incumbent, be they red or blue. Most of them have played the system because they could (does that remind you of anyone?) and because we let them. We have abandoned our posts as keepers
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of the flames of democracy and freedom. We have become absorbed in the frivolousness of an age and a pace of consumption in which we have turned away from prudence and have forgotten ourselves and our children. We no longer know when enough is enough. We must set new priorities of deeds and time. We must know that it is only when we monitor ourselves with the knowledge of a maturing sense of responsibility that we can care for and raise our children to accept their own responsibilities. Life is a gift that only keeps on giving when it is honored and nurtured. The priority for us all must be the nurturing of an education to a purpose. Curriculums must be honest and complete. They must cover the essentials of a base of knowledge that allows for an understanding of ourselves and our surrounding circumstances. The facts of the day must be situated in the knowledge and understanding of history, a history that is brimming with a composite narrative that gives us a broad vision of all the facets of the diamond of life. This means that there must be a driving force, a movement that coincides with the benevolence of the organic. The organics rules are an abiding road map that knows that all of the now does not equal never, and most of the time these are the essential governors of our thinking. Life is not a zero-sum game. It demands our very best and our objective purpose must be that of a committed life-long curriculum.

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THE DRIVEL CALLED NEWS Prognosticators of every ilk pontificate diatribes of ignorance. From inept Generals to stupid Fellows of seemingly prestigious institutions and organizations, along with an entire cadre of idiotic politicians, not to mention blabbering talk-show hosts, to effusively simple-minded pundits, we have them all on the airways and screens of the day and night. The language of ideological ineptitude echoes through the halls of bounded and unbounded airways saying almost nothing as whirlpools of self-speak resonate only with fanatical fringes. Welcome to the news of the day. And yet we do not really listen or watch well. It could be that most of us have never really listened well or paid enough attention to what we were watching. History is replete with examples of multitudinous choruses that have screamed, shouted, cried, and whispered, Help to set us free! We sometimes glanced in their directions and a few times wondered what the fuss was all about, and even who they were. Pay the Piper now or pay the Piper later has always been the case. We have forever chosen to pay later and then bantered about, blaming anyone and everyone. We have all been ostriches with our heads buried in the sands of time. Freedoms clarion has sounded across the landscapes of history immemorial. Before there were political treatises, accords, and agreements, we spoke with our actions. We warred and we fled. The sounds of clashing spears and crashing chariots drowned out the scuffle and shuffle of weary and hurried feet. We have all been caught in the confines of our own history, always bathing in the lassitude of a before of custom and an afterward of chaos and change; always growth and change. On and off the human path we have charged ahead with spears,
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bows, and sabers held high as screaming minions raced across the land and through time. Now we hear those same screams and cries as weapons are aimlessly fired into the sky as a failure to recognize the omnipresence of a necessity to adhere, with a deep commitment, to a focused intent. The fruits of laboring along the human paths do not all ripen in the same field or at the same time. In the vagaries of our efforts we have not maintained a fidelity to the gifts of wisdom and freedom. We have trifled away our time. We have turned our backs upon our fellow travelers. We have ignored our brothers and our sisters. There is always an opportunity for expansion in our selfperception when we come to know that respect is only possible when we realize that what we recognize in another is a reflection of oneself and in that there is a great awakening to a more complete world view. We see mine / yours / his / hers / its / the alls / as a profound beauty of great significance without which we are not truly human. Beneficence / munificence is the caring movement, birthing an awe of understanding, that melts from sky to earth and back again as an intention of yeses, manifesting the sacred of us all. We must, in the end, maintain a fidelity to our whole self in the relationship of divine providence that cradles us and all that surrounds us. The surgical operations have long since started. There is a flood of would-be pundits, who from their stupor of ignorance ask, What is the exit strategy? One might conceive of a time when sufficient focus would be upon getting this first phase of the operation done right while we turn some of our minds and hearts to the organic present and deal with each significant development as it occurs. Those with an ounce of sense know there is neither need nor any desire to stay in any foreign land, in a military sense, one minute longer than is necessary. And

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yet we must remember; the key to wisdom is to know when to even go as well as how long to stay. For decades the U.S. and the rest of the world has pussyfooted around the obviousness of reality: cultures are different, perceptions of reality are different. This stance has, for the most part, not seen reality in its great cohesive-stretch over time. Reality, in the end, does not care about the ignorance of a few. It follows the dictates of a sufficient critical mass that selfdefines in some predictable fashion. The perceptive among us have realized that the arc of human history carries with it the True North of personal and communal freedoms. The human soul aspires to express itself, in itself, by itself, and through itself. We live knowing there will always be a newer, deeper, ever-expanding expression of freedom. Our greatest challenge will forever be to embrace and to incorporate an everwidening, all-encompassing joy of life that ever-giving gift of being that chants in celestial notes, Life itself is our reason for being! To its everlasting shame, in the midst of our good deeds, the United States has stood by for far too long when atrocities were being committed. We, as a nation, should have drawn lines in the sands of time long ago. Isolation did not work then and it doesnt work now in an interdependent world. The United States has stood by and witnessed massacres, genocide, and the usurpation of resources by demagogues, dictators, and bullies all around the world. We have not demonstrated a universal commitment to the principles of our Bill of Rights and our Constitution. If, indeed, the rights we extol are natural rights that all people possess, then we should stand by them in the protection of those rights. We are now reaping the madness of our abandonment. The cost in human life is incalculable. The cost in treasure and time is also incalculable. As the fire of democracy sweeps across the face of the globe, we must step
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forward and assist freedom-loving and freedom-seeking people anywhere in the world with any and all measures available to us. That the health of the parts depends upon the health of the whole is painfully obvious. Isolation has never been and is not now an option. Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way has been our battle cry; it must now become our personal commitment to each and every fellow human being starting with our neighbors next door and around the world. It is best, when idiots deny the holocaust and genocides, that we remember we are not obligated to spend any time engaged in a dialog of ignorance. We need to move on, locked to our course by a commitment to purpose through a focused attention, by paying homage to the efforts of the freedom-seeking species.

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WHERE ARE WE? Too many of us have lain fallow in the understanding of and the development of our ideologies. We took what we could from our exposure to parents, teachers, and acquaintances, the basics of our knowledge. With language and sentiments we crawled, walked, and ran into life with what we have come to think was right, the truths of our experience. Little did most of us know just how small those sheltered moments were until we were exposed to a larger world. By then, most of us were steeped in fundamental points of view that we had come to believe were the essentials of who we really were. When we were confronted with information that conflicted with our homegrown knowledge many of us felt threatened. We said to ourselves, Thats different! Eskimos wear funny clothes. The Chinese are very different. I dont want to go there. From these glances at the differences of others and our own predilections for friends, our favorite color, tastes and smells, warm soft fuzzies, we formed our world views. As we grew into our surrounds we came to think we knew of these things and depending upon our geography, we were exposed to white Americans, native Americans, black Americans, brown Americans, yellow Americans, and others of every kind: English, Spanish, French, Germans, Moroccans, Sheiks, Tibetans, Lutherans, the list becomes interminable. So most of us just made the practical decisions to move on with our lives for the most part as they were; school, relationships, dreams, family, careers, and that ubiquitous thing called entertainment, all consumed our lives. Of course we were exposed to the ever-changing ethnic faces and accents on television. Slowly, blended groups of different faces flowed
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before our eyes and ears and we began to accept a certain Okayness. After all, they were there and we were here. We didnt really have to put up with them and they couldnt get to us. How much conscious reflection about the changing social landscape really went on, to what depths did our thinking go, and what implications did we draw from our new panoramas? Not much, Im afraid, except when every two years some election cycle presented an ever-changing slate of candidates drawn from the breadth and depth of the melting pot. There emerged questions and speculations about race, religion, leftists, and rightists, and those who were really American, whatever that meant. All of this has come from whichever myopic or intransigent viewpoint we were attempting to cling to. It was the same old, same old, story. Our growth toward a more cosmopolitan world view was crawling along at a snails pace, while the intrepid movement of humanity was busy flowing into every nook and cranny of our lives. Suddenly, as with all realizations, we came to know we were here, they were there. Now what? Should we bathe in the shadows of our adolescent ignorance or should we develop a more mature point of departure and grow into a new understanding of our capacity to change our minds about people and even our politics? One of the beauties of the movement of the human species is that, in the main and for the most part, we have accepted the sameness of our kind. The human mosaic swirls around us and we participate in a phasing multiethnic melting pot. Browns marry reds, whites marry blacks, Jews marry Christians, Protestants become Muslims, and Muslims become evangelicals, etc, etc, and as well, all of their reciprocals. What an entertaining play! There are always new characters and new plots. We stay glued to the TV or Screen until the next two44

year cycle and then, again, some of us wander back into our caves to rant and rave about the differences. They really arent the same dont you know? How pathetic some of the margins of the melting pot can be! Some of us say (out loud), How archaic! How stupid! And some of us even shoot for the moon, How insane is that! Such a display of language! Always extolling, always betraying our guided and misguided sentiments, and setting the stage for a convoluted road to actual understanding. It seems, in the anxiety-ridden depths of ourselves, there always comes a wonder that says, What is really true? What is really right? From behind some remnant of our childhood or adolescence, we peer out at the current moment and we sense the fleeting pressure of a new awareness, This is really here now. This changing world is where I live. And finally, How am I going to make sense of what I have always thought and what I see today? Depending on the degree of our ability to heroically stand against time, our own history and its limits, we can choose to grow and accept that much of what we see is true and in these new truths there are fertile combinations of the old and new, some are the same and some are different. We can marvel at the new and accept its beauty and reality, or we can rant and rave about the good old days which for the most part are just old days. In any case, they now belong to history and as we threshold on a new history we realize, at some level, that this history is really ours now. Our only reasonable choice is to make the most of it for ourselves, the ones we love, and well, yes, most of the rest of humanity itself. We now also know enough to realize that there will always be those that we need to keep our eyes on. This is where the vast majority of the species finds itself, in the middle of the same old ever-new river of life, always becoming
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aware of changing circum-stances, always being pushed into a new understanding of the human journey. We always live needing to grow and pay a greater attention to the whole story of our kind. And yet there are those who stand on the edges of this vast majority and rail against the new river. Some believing that it is flowing too fast, some knowing it is flowing too slowly. They find it difficult to fathom the facts of an ever-changing present full of the joys and fears of the ever-present palettte of some omnipresent force that manifests itself in an abundance of beneficence or an episodic capricious tragedy that presents opportunities for new growth. Somehow we seem to be immune to the understanding that most of us, most of the time, are not being put upon by pestilence and death. Sunsets and moonrises happen and tranquility exists in the midst of war. Welcome to the human epic. Rise up and choose the freedom of a new thought birthed in new times. Grab the reigns of self and take your chances along with all the others. Come to know that somehow you can learn to flourish in this new river and remember that this new river, like all rivers for all time, flows into that grand confluence of all life. We must revel in the gifts of the present, always seeking a complementary existence that holds as holy the lifeblood of us all.

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WHO SAID THAT? When individuals are too small, governments are too big. When individuals are too big, governments are too small. Although the cosmos and our world are awesome truly grand, there are only some things that we can influence; few in the cosmos and some here on planet earth. Most of our attention should be placed where it can do the most good. Without belaboring the point, we should all start with self. A keen selfawareness in the course of human history is amply demonstrated by most of our fruitful accomplishments. * * * Play one! After all there is only one of you, one of me, and we will be our own greatest works. Stand still in silence! Becoming an astute audience of the orchestra of one, ones only true and lovely note, and the ability to harmonize that note, is our greatest challenge. True! Not true! Mine! Not mine! This is that discerning process that gives us tools and opportunities to walk the talk. Own it now! This is that existential mandate that nature presents as our only way. Life is littered with those who have not honored this omnipresent dictum: Pay attention or die! Act in love! This is the only word that says it all. It will need sufficient compassion to give us the necessary focus on knowledge, care, responsibility, and respect. All must be present.
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Dedicate yourself to growth! Nothing stays the same. To everything there is a season. Challenge yourself to maintain complete integrity and to be open to each one. Follow all of lifes rules!1 There is no other way to own the gift of life and to share that gift with our surrounds. Everything is holy. Participating in the Divines Sacred Play must be done with a humble heart. There is no other way.

The Rules are from The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others. They can be found at pathtotheself.com or http://amzn.to/fOrqEi

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MEDIAS GIFTS The inundation of the medias fare has the potential to entertain us beyond our ability to cope and to consequently corrupt our self-perception, our perception of those around us, and as well, their perception of us. It is not that we can delete the abundance of the media; it is that we have not learned to live in an age of medias fecund production. The tragedy seems to be that many have not learned to parse the fare and limit their exposure to the onslaught. It does not go without saying: there is an abundance of wonderful stuff out there. The problem is that we have yet to learn how to deal with it in human terms. Adults (I use that word wistfully.) have allowed children to surf unattended in a raging sea. New technologies have become the interwoven fabric of our various cultures. We have all had to adapt, have adopted for the most part, the new and transformative interface in some melding of our known world with the ever new faces of the media. In the course of events we have had to be taught, or taught ourselves, just how the new technology enhances our lives or impoverishes our lives. Many of us have just transitioned into some acceptance of the new technologies and in passing made some cursory judgment about their contributions and effectiveness. In the process, most of us have learned that our lives have become freer, even easier. Yet there have also been those critics who advised us to attempt some understanding of the various implications of the new technologies. Meanwhile, we were too busy focused only on the good or what we thought was good. Couch potatoes served as a metaphor of fact, and yet we disregarded the facts. Now, with obesity rampant and communication between members of our own families minimal, titles suggest: The Lonesome Crowd, Alone Together, Home Alone, The End of History, The Last Man, Without Marx or Jesus. The list goes on.

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For us to maintain a practice of adopting technologies and indiscriminately withdrawing our time from others and living as though we can develop relationships with a thing, is an abhorrent fact. Interpersonal dynamics have been an essential aspect of our self-perception and our ability to manifest a commitment to another that resulted in the births of children for whom we should have the highest regard, and for whom we ought to have created circumstances that protected them when they were young and environs that enhanced their abilities to tease from their surrounds more of what they might need in order to enjoy creative and productive lives. We thought, really deluded ourselves, that we were parenting well. It is not so difficult to imagine otherwise. For many this was an accumulation of tools, without which labor would have become ominous and tedious. For others this was an opportunity to accumulate material wealth as well as gadgets, a plethora of things, collections of every imaginable thing. The utopian audio and visual fare fed less-than-seasoned souls. Arguments were made that as we lived longer and looked forward to those leisure years, hobbies added an aesthetic to our lives that became an indispensible aspect of presenting opportunities to deepen our appreciation of the depths of our loose-fitting personhoods. There was some truth in this assessment. There were also assessments that pointed toward a growing awareness of too much and too little. Children were abandoned to televisions and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) of all sorts. Manners were the first to go as we paid more attention to objects/things and less to people. Caring, responsibility, and respect were soon to follow our lost manners. Language became crass and abbreviated. We became less cheerful and more anxious, even angry. And forgetting that all anger has a target, we took our anxieties and frustrations out on those around us. We became less than helpful, less neigh50

borly, and less productive in our civil affairs. Inhibited and overexposed, we were lost in a bivalent dance. We carped on the schools lack of ability to teach the essentials, when the shouldering of responsibility was less than obvious. Few stood ready to teach the young how to cope with the onslaught of the media. Many, (most) of us even asked them to help us understand how the damn thing worked. For the most part, their eye rolling wasnt even noticed. They began their trek, as all young souls do, into a brave new world without the guiding loving hand of parents. How many ways have we learned to sin against our own? Now, in our half-hearted attempts to restore some common sense in the runaway pace of the day, we stand dumbfounded and exhausted. We are besought with questions: Where are we? Where have we been going? How have we gotten here? And finally; what have we done to ourselves and our children? We have neglected both. So, being those efficient anthropoids, we schedule self-maintenance and self-sculpting sessions at the club. The children have long since disappeared into the worlds of self-exposure and drugs. Okay, now what to do? Corral them all and feed them whole-wheat pabulum? The late-night jesters will offer a list of ad nauseam possibilities in their hyper angst and less-than-respectful soliloquies and monologues as if none of it really matters and yet the children are up late and taking it all in on their own medium-sized, the large ones are in the family rooms, flat-screen HD3D worlds. What simple and elegant proposal could we entertain that would give us some opportunity to redeem ourselves and help the children save themselves? And dont give me that, Luv ya! Have a nice day! stuff. Banality is still just that, banality. And for those of you not so inclined, that word doesnt mean little banana.

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If I was to suggest Bible reading, it wouldnt get it done. There is little sense of awe and trembling to fix it in some want to know and be responsible context. Shock and awe have been tried by some of the so-called grownups and now we want to cut and run. Was it too little, too soon, too late? The debate anguishes on. Could we turn to some sense of a historical appreciation of the species long and difficult journey? Too few have any understanding of the past. They spend their afternoons at the matinee and surfing. Time spent in sharing the unfolding of a persons loving appreciation of the many gifts of our presence is what we need to learn to do. This will require a new template, a new (really very, very old) set of rules. I suggest, for those of you who can still read and understand what you are reading, that you give The Game of Life: A Players Manual for Executives and Others, a try. In this new world of wannabes shouldnt everyone be the executive of their own self/world? Well, maybe not in a world where we allow the less informed among us to steal our freedoms and to cage us in some aseptic, insipid, postmodern, pathetic social game. Good luck with that! Be courageous! Think: I am! more often in a humble and prayerful thanksgiving. Know the challenge is always to do the right stuff, and in that we can bask in an appreciation of a purposeful life well lived.

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT As the new transparency of an age peels away ever more layers of the human onion, we, along with the assistance of the technology of our time, will continue to uncover within and outside ourselves a vast array of trivia and more of the essentials. Some we will not understand, some we will dismiss, some we will heroically attempt to appropriate as necessities in our new world. This will not be done without difficulties and a sustained commitment to own what we perceive is in our very best interests. As we turn in our intellectual and spiritual wanderings, we will fumble and grasp after the ridiculous and sublime. And as the pace will seem to slip faster and ever faster in the onslaught of the forever new, we will take less and less time to sort out and own the burdens, the opportunities, and the responsibilities of our newfound and ever more important freedoms of choice. In all of this, it is prudent to recall the double-edged sword of truth. It cannot be wielded with the sanctimony of youth or the ignorance of the uninformed. It will take practiced masterful strokes of insight to seize the necessary and to make straight the way. We will see how many are called and how few really choose to assume the mighty mantle of freedom. There will be many who will choose by default or by design to attempt to escape the obligations of choice as more and more of us seek to play with our Smart phones, iPads, and Kindle Fires. This we all must do as we seek to live in our new now and to know, in that concomitance of life, what life is all about. And yet we must, as well, reach out to walk the walk and talk the talk with family and friends.

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We stand on the shore of a new world and we are increasingly at risk of setting sail without ourselves. Stand and hold fast to the gifts of the centuries! We must touch one another and say from the very depths of our new-found centripetal personhoods, Yes to life! Yes to all the sacred acts of sharing!

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DERIVATIVES Derived from what exactly? Are they a mixture of a synergism of hyped time and under and overvalued money? If you print it you must use it well, circulate it ASAP. So they say. But then they talk in such obfuscating apologetics, always with a tinge of arrogance, the former dulling our senses and the latter stroking our dissatisfaction. We must hearken back to some semblance of common sense. Why do we play their game anyway? Is it that we, toying with our own mantel of hubris, enjoy dancing with that Satan of Avarice? When did we cross over the line of something for nothing?1 When did bended back and sweat-laden brows, both revealing and foretelling of the actions and dreams of our kind, become less than important? How is it that we find ourselves printing paper some with ancient symbols some with heroes some with nationalistic slogans and think we can exchange these pieces of paper one for the other and end up with something more than? Can we honestly say, as we stir the gruel of cyclonic avarice, that we have the well-being of our brothers and sisters in mind, heart, and soulfulness? Or are we too progressive in our secular age to think that and that one really does matter at all? And the inventors and brokers of derivatives, lost in swill, lust, and arrogance, speak among themselves, We have touched the all of the earth and bumped into stalwart folks in every nook and cranny judging them all, of course, for their lack of similarity to us, we judge them as less than and unworthy. Well, lets get right down to it expendable. After all, we could mine the metals, minerals, and oil more efficiently we dont really need them.
1

See Nothing Is Free in this current volume of Sign Posts.

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Their primitive time-consuming machinations arent what we would call productive or efficient. They are so incredibly beneath us. And nobody watches sunsets and moonrises well, very few anymore. Perhaps a few romantics still wage battle with that nonsense. We, the best of us sophisticates, well; we just dont have time for any kind of reflection on the mundane. We have derivatives to milk, to squeeze what isnt there right out of nothing. Thin air, some would say and truth be told they are more right than wrong. Being cynical is one of our most attractive attributes. Sometimes we even laugh at their incompetence in not being able to see that there is nothing there but hot air. Hot air that, for us, comes in the guise of fees, high salaries, and bonuses dont you know? Well, enough of this wasteful reminiscing, we have miles to go. Our work now encompasses the whole globe. We are so much alike always chasing rainbows well now Im waxing poetic. I will have to stop, it might just resurrect some inklings of sentiment and we cant have any of that. What derivatives could possible come from it? Oh yes! The ancients those truly ancient would have said it could and should give birth to compassion. That is not in our post-postmodern repertoire of attributes. How loathsome would that be in our demeaning deprecation and thoughtless word-filled games that belie our lost and lustful souls? We are Oh, so now. * * *

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Beware from your pedestals of solid hubris you deem them all your fodder! Play on you maniacs of time and money before the clock stops ticking and the money shrivels to ashes. Didnt someone say, Dust to dust ashes to ashes, perdition to hell? Oh well

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FRUSTRATION REITERATED It has been said, and yet bears repeating: We must, if we rationally can choose to survive, keep an omnipresent pressure on the real. This is our mandate: PAY ATTENTION OR DIE. Nature in her magnificence is honest to the core. Lest we forget she means it, as we develop the umbrella, or envelope, of our omnipresent mediated environment, we must keep a watchful eye on everything all of the time. Neighbors, close and afar, weather, politicians, governments, the list goes on. What part of this do we not understand? And the older we get, for most of us, the more we realize just how important this PAY ATTENTION OR DIE mandate really is. This is an excellent opportunity for our retired brothers and sisters, in their heroic attempts to do just that, to exercise their newfound skills and start sweeping, mopping, cleansing, polishing, and honing the wonderments and applications of the internet. While many are doing just this, we need legions of the willing to help stem the tide of the malicious, seditious, and insidious. As the old Chinese proverb says, We must move our chairs closer to the fire to see what we are saying. Or, has been so often said, Battle on!

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LOOKING FOR THAT THING I see this more as a matter of ignorance and false shame. There is an abundance of ignorance out there. People simply do not know many of them because they have never had that innate curiosity to seek those great universal truths, truths that speak to the soul of the species, truths that have driven us for millennia toward those higher aspirations. They came of an age without sufficient commitment to that personally focused responsibility to seek excellence in the self. That age-old path of recognizing ones own talents and mastering them well enough to be able to say, Well done! to ones self. Not some minute of fleeting notoriety of difference, that is not of excellence. Rewards became a manifestation of a shared social conscience that chose to treat everyone as equals when no one is equal. We are only exceptional in our own ways, and our path to excellence lies along our own integrity of purpose. Most people never got that message. Instead, in a perennial adolescent, peer-driven focus on acceptance, they wallow in a shallow sense of self, wanting desperately to be liked by everyone. They choose screaming and shouting in some bland branded myopia. They lack that fire in the belly of the great race, the mountain top, a life goal. Our social sense of treating everyone the same has robbed many of any sense of higher purpose. What we see and hear are adolescent whimpers and wailings. There is only a fading sense of greatness. We need a cultural shock that will open eyes and ears to profound realities that do not bode well for human life. And in a newfound awareness, we need to reach to the depths of ambivalent souls, and grabbing the helm of self, rise to a greater sense of personal and familial integrity, an integrity that gives birth to a commitment that is life-long, a commitment that demands our everything. Let freedom ring!
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OUR TIME The context of our discourse is wanting not because there isnt context there is always context, but because we have fallen victims to the mediated pace of the day. The essential pause to place the slices of the news in its graded context, its connectedness, is sorely missing. And without it, we wander in a shadowed world of half-truths and fodder for those who have less than the interest of the whole and a composite of ones in their minds or in their hearts. There are those who choose a subversive, less-than-honest, piece of propaganda designed to keep the uninformed ignorant and to victimize the innocent by stealing those essential freedoms, freedoms that form the constructs of our national founding documents and our subsequent history of commitment to those ideals. To continue in our current, less than thoughtful, parsing of the historical context of our limited exposure to the facts of the matter and the spun and doctored tidbits designed to advance an ideology that is an anathema to human freedom, is less than wise. Alongside these choreographed diatribes of falsehood and seditious onslaughts, we also had the advancements of technology that moved information at the speed of live. More and more news was cherry picked and edited to reinforce an ideology that had heaped untold sound bites upon us (no pun intended) to shore up a less than complete picture of human suffering and missteps that turned innate intentions to be free toward a decadent tendency to be taken care of by anyone, and most assuredly a government of those who choose to inhabit a present as well as a future that allows many to practice sloth and avarice. We have bequeathed to future generations
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the options of being lazy and greedy as potential options that ostensibly would serve us in our best interest. They never have and never will. The double seduction of less-than-honest propaganda and a user-friendly media technology, both of which helped and hindered us enough for us to take our eye off the facts of the matter and the consequences of a lack of reasoned commitment to our innate desires and our personal responsibilities will, if left un-attended, be fatal. We need to separate those salacious selected slices of some failed ideological construct, those that play to our worst vices, vices that demean our human nature, from those historically accurate descriptions of the grand human epic. This will require a maturing mantle of truth seeking; one that presents those heroic complementary efforts that will bring out the very best of our conscious commitments to own responsibly our personal participation in the great mosaic of our personal and societal actions. As a nation and as individuals we are on a precipice, if we lose our balance and slip over the edge many will perish and the reconstruction of ourselves and our governing principles will be very difficult. To have evolved an orderly nation, one built on founding principles that recognized and elucidated freedoms of being that governed by laws designed to protect those freedoms, were essential we indeed, with a masterful stroke of genius, created a democratic republic. As the beneficiaries of this great accomplishment, we have produced innumerable benefits and done much to elevate the lives of our fellow citizens and those of the entire world. Our lives have been unburdened of the mundane and our hopes have been raised to great heights. In the process of these accomplishments we have lessened our commitments to the
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responsibilities of the concomitants of our productive and busy efforts and the participation in our own governance. In this new age, where we possess an insufficient understanding of history and are engaged in an onslaught of entertainment, we have failed to learn to focus our attention on an ever more rapidly imploding global whole and as well on an ever more demanding attention to our own well-being. In all of this there is also the absolute need to put our shoulders to the wheel of great new ideas ideas that will inspire us to labor incessantly at the task of preserving our freedoms. In addition to these new ideas, we must learn new skills in order to restrict ourselves from the onslaught of noxious nothingness and to focus our attention on the essentials. When confronted with too much of anything we must limit our exposure and mine the depths of that which we already know. We must seize the tiller of self and engage ourselves in our work for freedoms sake.

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SO POLITICALLY CORRECT Trying to be so politically correct, do we ignore our common sense? The facts at hand: There is nothing correct about either ignorance or the danger that comes from not knowing. Digging in the wastebasket of nonsense is a waste of time and energy. Stupidity is just that stupid. While there is an intimate relationship of reciprocity in the great scheme of things, it does not follow that all things have an equal value or even an important value. There are many things that are true and simply do not matter to any really important degree to everyone. A culture that allows for the creation of infrastructural insidiousness in the general perception of reality has impaired its understanding as well as its actions actions that need to be taken in a timely fashion. We not only waste our economic wherewithal, but we also waste our time and efforts. We must remember that all things change, becoming always more or less. Think balanced budget, interest rates, immigration, foreign affairs, war, the economy, etc. Politically correct nonsense of the last 50 years has reshaped our perspective of the real. We cannot get to: Say what you mean and mean what you say.1 We have chosen to forfeit an essential aspect of our freedom. We now must (it seems) seek reference to be sure that our statements wont alienate any part of any constituency. The fact is, some parts are so marginal they simply do not matter. Natures rules are simply put: Those who can, survive; those who cannot, dont. And dont hearken to any statement like: Well, that is insensitive! General rules almost always have exceptions. It is obvious that the human species was born with an encompassing compassion along with a mind that knows universals matter, and that all information is accumulative.
1

See: Frank Luntzs many books on language use. Check amazon.com

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Yet it is true that we have succumbed to mitigated points of view that for the most part belie the facts of history and the facts currently on the ground. Of course, how could we judge the facts at all if our currently contaminated politically correct mind-set attempts to mitigate everything? Efforts to live in a world where we attempt to accomplish anything without offending anyone is an oxymoronic standpoint. It simply will not work. We do not need to engage in endless efforts to repeat ad nauseam, What I really meant was Close enough has always been just that, close enough. Is anyone getting the picture? We are lost in a morass of thinking that clouds our vision and impairs our decision making. Consequently, many of our actions are uninformed and less than meaningful or timely. So get informed and get timely. We need to muster sufficient courage to own our perceptions of truth and engage in some complementary effort to add to the well-being of our kind come hell or high water. State the obvious and move on!

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NOW WAIT A MINUTE! If red is dead then blue is through. Weve birthed them both in search for truth so there must be some in each. We emerge, partially, from natures arms and then it is that we must learn to walk alone/together. How can this be when mine is mine and yours is yours except that time when yours is mine and mine is yours? A Great Age is upon us, it has always been, and it is now that we must choose to be present in ourselves and to one another in ways that demonstrate the gathered wisdom of the ages. It cannot be that we must start from scratch. Too many have given so much, taken so much, done so much. Those treasures of our accumulated development and understanding must now become the stepping stones that lead to a more refined appreciation of ourselves, each other one, and everything else. Capricious, even mad gesticulations are manifestations of childhood and adolescence. As that ever-deepening selfperception entwines in our circumstance, we must be bold enough to mature into our own age. And while it is not without its consternations, we must be about the equanimical application of our wherewithal, and there is much. We have gained incredible forms of mobility; variations of every size and hue of so many have led to so much. And we have consumed it all from A to Z. We have had those saints and sages who have admonished us, have pointed toward the others. Many of us looked away and saw less deserving otherthans, some we chose to slaughter and others we passed by. In our senseless pillaging and maiming, bequeathing many agonizing deaths, and destruction with much worth saving, we plunged forward into a wanton desecration, we became the
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desolate ones. We chose to strut in hubristic machinations, deceiving ourselves with our own ignorance assuming that we were the chosen ones; after all, we won the war, the battle, and the race. Truth is not just any movement; it is a self-coincidence with the sacred and that can only be a complement to the Divine. Knowing this is a humbling yesness that settles around us as a holy mantel. This is not something we wear with some sanctioned pride; it is a gift long sought after, patiently awaited and received only when we present ourselves as an innocent or practiced soul as part of the Divine Bouquet. So when we choose red / blue / Islam / Christianity and all the other ramifications of religious history or our imaginations, what forms the construct of our choices? It must be that committed gloved hand, cloaked with the holiness of self, that in incorporating think here what if a complementing presence to the Divines Oneness, it becomes more than and less than and nothing else matters. We are then in the arms of the Infinite Eternal. So why, in the face of this, do we wallow in ways that lie, bend, turn, twist, destroy those sacred others in our presence? To each has been assigned the same task to be red / blue / Muslim / Christian, whatever.

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WE ARE A WORLD OF LAWS There are no shortcuts to justice. The very character of personhood is bound to a commitment of recognizing mutually advantageous norms and laws that we submit to and that provide a governing umbrella for everyone and every country. Finding truths and following the laws of the land must be the single most focused effort of nationhood. We all must mine the depths of historical acumen; namely, for us, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as well as the body of case law that has become the cornerstone of our judicial system. Other nations have their own founding principles to which they can and must adhere. Nothing has a sense of meaning without a before and an after as we consider and choose to own a measured presence in our space/time. The current immigrant situation needs to be addressed fundamentally from legal and humanistic perspectives. In our case, if anyone is in the United States illegally then they are in the United States illegally. Therefore every approach taken to enforce the current laws laws designed to maintain control of our immigration policies and complement the intent of our founding documents should be applied at all levels of government local, state, and federal. The economic and psychological damage caused by avoidable incursions and subsequent destruction of life and property are unnecessary aftermaths of careless policy and a failure to apply the law. The current circumstances of intent and technology provide ample evidence that we can no longer ignore the facts at hand. A porous border and a problematic immigration policy are not in anyones best interest.

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Race is not and should not be used in any effort to create a working immigration methodology. We are all members of the human family. Simple procedures should be obvious: 1. Some form of a biometric identity card is not a violation of human rights. It is an example of prudence. 2. No individual or entity should employ an illegal alien. Fines and/or jail sentences, or both, should be severe. We are charged with upholding the tenets of the nation by adhering to the laws of the nation. 3. Anyone who is seeking employment or is stopped in the course of law enforcement activity must demonstrate their citizenship. Its as simple as that. Anyone who is not in the country legally will be fingerprinted, DNAed, and processed according to the laws of the nation. NOTE: Most cases will be straightforward. There will be some that are deserving of further investigation, i.e., if there is someone who can demonstrate sufficient need for political asylum, they may be eligible for special treatment, which may be that they will be sent to some more appropriate country they will not automatically become a citizen or a ward of the United States. This is not the only country that can and does accept individuals from problematic circumstances. Those who cannot be placed elsewhere and can demonstrate threatening circumstances should be allowed some temporary status not automatic citizenship. There are many countries in the world with relatively safe hospitable environments. Slowly there should be a tightening of immigration control via the enforcement of law that would create some semblance of order. The important thing is to start with what we already have and then to create an infrastructure and focus an appropriate

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amount of energy and assets on the management of the immigration problem. We have ignored it for far too long. We must close the borders to anyone not properly documented and any criminal element should be sent into the penal system of their country of origin. Now while I agree that there are some discrepancies of legal focus, a felon is a felon, a murderer is a murderer. These are social pariahs that belong to some cultural and human circumstance, and it is not unreasonable to assume that they belong in their own cultural circumstance. This also assumes that there would be some recognition of a cultural responsibility to care for their own, and to assume some measure of universal humane responsibility. A philosophical adage that applies to law as well as immigration as a human circumstance is: Form dictates content. Once the form the essential laws are set in place and enforced, the content will follow. That this is a global problem is obvious. Human nature is not a racial or political phenomenon; it is a generic attribute of the species and as such is the responsibility of all peoples. That any individual has an inherent right to seek meaningful employment is also manifest. The organic history of immigration amply demonstrates that we will seek a better place in which to realize our dreams. It is also true that social intercourse must be governed by laws that give a measure of security to the individuals of every society and that that measure of security must be enhanced through acceptable law. A just and well-monitored worker permit that provides opportunities for those so engaged should be established if and only if there is an internal need. Instead of much of the nonsensical palaver of the WTO (World Trade Organization), this should be a global priority. The facts at hand dictate that there is an element of the human family that does not have the best
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interest of human life in mind. Given the obviousness of this fact and the additional fact that technology provides the means to create very destructive opportunities for individuals and society, we should be about engaging in ways and methodologies that provide for an expression of human freedoms that complement human life.

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FREEDOM OF THE SPIRIT Spirit comes before the letter of the law, through the letter of the law, and beyond the letter of the law. How do we identify ourselves as a self? History and capacity play their role. These are themes for another discussion. So let us focus on our political self-definitions, our participation in a body politic at the local and global level, and all those enclaves along the way, precipitates in our historical understanding of how well we can get along together, achieve some measure of our personal dreams, and respect the personal dreams of our fellow human beings. It all comes down to our sense of well-being, our whole sameness as vessels of freedom. If this is true, there must be a maturing sense of self that grows with us as we become more experienced, as we age. One should suppose that a more balanced, a more open and closed self, would emerge from our personal and interpersonal history, the history of our individuality, our indivisible-duality. There are those who have critiqued the yeses and nos of our long journey into self and our individual upbringing. There is something in these critiques. I have written about that Salmonic imprint of that longing for some distant shore where there will be an ending and a new beginning. This can be a serene shore of yesteryear or some placid place yet to come. In either case, it is a motivational necessity, a place of peace, a place where our self fits, is welcomed, and we have an intimate knowledge of just what it is to be a self-coincidental being. It is a place of silent knowledge, a place of knowing when we are on the path to the truth of our real selves and when we are off that path. We come to realize that there is only one true path for each and every individual, and that the essential for everyone is mastering of ones own freedom to become what
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we have come to understand is eternally already there. In order to accomplish this free self-expression, we must be free to coincide with that very being of our self. The many idealists and realists, utopians and pragmatists have, for the most part, poorly understood this essential attribute of human nature, of freedom. One could even say all lifes freedoms. They have not grasped the emergence of a selfownership that provides a beacon for all of ones own personal development and the developments of all others. No one can be subjugated and be free. There have been and there are those convoluted and trying moments when a few or many have come to believe that a form of subjugation is or was in their best interests, and yet in the end they find (or have found) that there is an absolute necessity in the having of freedom. (There are those exceptions in cases when a person is a danger to self or others or chooses to malign the peaceful coexistence of our kind by disregarding the sacred concept of ownership, including self-ownership.) We, as rational souls, must have access to our personal freedoms or we cannot fulfill our very own purpose for being. To think that we are free is incongruent with our very nature. It is only in that free exercising of our very selves that we are free. In our current age, an age defined by machines of every stripe, we have been seduced into a complacency that has shadowed our vision. We have lapsed into an artificial incomplete expression of self, a self that has become accustomed to less than sufficient freedoms in order to self-define, to mature and to self-express. We must rouse ourselves from our somnambulant adolescence. We are at risk of losing our most profound attribute, without which we cease to be an example of humankind, for kindness is a rational choice. Any thought or belief to the contrary is a childish whim, one that causes us to wish to be held in a parents all-encompassing
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arms, always protected1 and never exposed to circumstances that can challenge us into becoming all that we are. It would be our most grievous mistake.

This is another one of the many reasons for us to promulgate a respect for and an obligation toward maintaining families families where those protected moments foster that innate sense of okayness that allows for one to risk that journey into selfhood, without which one cannot be free. You may be interested in Martin Heideggers Being and Time. http://amzn.to/GSUCsg

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AN OBSERVATION Urban people tend to believe that they have a certain anonymity in a crowd, which colors their take on secularity. As if there is some comfort zone that can be found in a common denominator that gives support to ones personal sense of well-being. This can make them resent their commonality which mirrors a perceived threat to their individuality. Although this can be present where there are only two people in common space, the feeling is amplified when there are many people in common spaces. This can affect both language and nonverbal behavior. The language can be condensed to rapidly streamed, unsettling selfspeak on the one hand and loud, coarse, even banal invectives on the other. The body language can be arms protectively folded across chests or hands stuffed in pockets, to exaggerated arm swinging and swaggering. With its omnipresent brush, TV paints cultures portrait as a grand palette that levels the behavior of us all. The mimic in us all serves us well and sets us apart from ourselves. This does not mean that in urban settings there are not those enclaves of gentle circles where mutual support provides that essential gift of well-being, enabling those creative effervescent sparks of enlightenment, caring, responsibility, and respect all exuding that complementary support to the heart of the species to exist and even in many ways to enhance the creative quotient of our genius; they certainly can. However, in the homogenization of our activities, our challenge will always be to maintain an eternal vigilance, one that while making sweeping appraisals of the whole, touches the
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worst, the common, and the best of our kind. We must keep watching out for one while inspiring others, and acknowledging excellence where we find it so that while we plow the depths of our potentials, we provide for growth to protect every member of our own kind.

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A PERFECT STORM What happens when confusion meets ignorance and the status quo gets rocked? What does a younger generation do, one that came of age in the last ten years, when wants and expectations go unmet? Many young people are seduced into the Group Think of the moment by words that reflect a thin film of palliative, common even trite stuff that wouldnt rise to the level of aphorisms or shallow truisms. They are lacking in intellectual depth and breadth. What knowledge they may have it certainly isnt wisdom they use to make spasmodic social or political commentary, if they make any comment at all, delivered with a very sanctimonious attitude, tinged with just enough irony and cynicism to capture the fleeting attention of a less than dignified generation. They cast aspersions against a supposed history and a present as well as those currently working on the problems of the moment. Too many are unschooled and misinformed. Victims of any age who choose ignorance, and who through no choice of their own find themselves with insufficient information, will inevitably encounter difficulties and find their contributions wanting. They prattle and babble. Democracy cannot flourish with an uninformed populace. We have met the problem and it is US has already been said. And here the pun is intended. Many people are living out some self-fulfilling prophecy of their own making. Who wants to be wrong? Embarrassment as a tool only works for the maturing person who is able to say, I was wrong in what I thought about this or that and I can choose to grow/change to develop a well-grounded, integrated perspective on the real, a perspective enmeshed in Natures grandeur, her incessant willing, her pushing and pulling, her making things happen. We likewise
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must exercise our will in choosing to follow the roadmap of the virtues. We must come to know them and to recognize the absolute need to practice them in every aspect of our lives. Where are the leaders? To each and every one I say, It is our turn now! Politician became an ugly word when a critical mass decided to colonize a piece of the public turf for their own benefit and in order to do that they had to leave integrity at the front door and enter the belly of the beast. They had to lie, cheat, and steal from their constituents. They had to compromise everything and to everyone knowing there couldnt be an easy way to ameliorate the differences. Just keep tensions high, class warfare works, and build arguments based on separation and fear. Tax and spend became the mantra of the ill informed. While history breathes in soft vales and screams from mountain tops, they play along with faux charisma adapted from the screens of the present and salted into every social encounter. Feed the monster of I dont want to be wrong! and at a deeper level Just take care of me! Too many act as if they are coarse, brackish adolescents who dont know much about anything least of all respect. Democracy demands an enlightened maturing sense of selfworth and sufficient compassion to know enough to care about personal freedom and all of the inherent manifestations of the essential need to express that freedom in thought, word, and deed all forming a new religion, the religion of our very own personhoods. Each one of us is to wear only our own with the utmost integrity of being. We must Play one or die! at the intellectual, physical, and spiritual level. The only way for us to live is by giving all of our really true self, our one to the One as some form of holy creative maturation.

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Generations come and generations go. Some come on the crests of history and some come in the troughs of history. Our current crops of Gen-Xers and Millennials are not exceptions; they are merely exposed to different circumstances, which presented or obfuscated either new information or old information. It is only in the melding of the two that we can add girth and depth to the new edifice of our understanding and our honest participation in the process of creation. The winds blow and weather changes from the classic to the neoclassic, from the conservative to the neocon, from the communists to the progressives (anything but), we are all those precursors and succeeding stages of human development that we have come through and must go through. We are pieces of a moving template that forces us to divine solutions for the human paradox: We live knowing we will die. We can choose to love or to hate. We must live understanding our place in the movement of history. We cannot just float along and trust that all things will go well. Without a reasoned and dedicated acquisition of wisdom and commitment we will lose our great nation status and become a failed state, a has been country, one that was blessed with a new beginning and a purpose, one that finally lost its way. What part of Pay attention or die! dont we get and why dont we get it? If one generation cannot talk to another, if there is insufficient respect and trust, we will vanish from the face of the earth. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth was gone: and the sea is now no more. Revelation 21:1

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I AM AN I AM! Preface My body of work in the genres of Reflective Poetry and SelfDevelopment, as well as Political and Social Commentary offers an expanding exposure presenting opportunities to reflect, to sense awe, and to choose a new level of responsibility that demands growth and maturity in our personal and worldview. This growth can provide opportunities for us to stand naked in the wind of our current moment, and from the precipice of self-ownership, embrace our participation responsibly as the co-creators and co-architects of our own lives. Reflective poetry provides vistas that offer moments of repose that can illicit intense commitment, birthing an integrity of being that grabs us and stirs our passions. The Finding Pieces included at the end of each collection of poetry are a distinctive element that could lead to actually discovering something that has practical as well as essential value. We are always presented with the necessity of a continuing discovery that showers us with opportunities to insert ourselves in our own time, in our own way, by complementing all being with a voice and actions that say, Yes! to life. With this in mind I would like to share some of my parsing of thoughts. Most of what I write is poetry searching for and acknowledging what is eternally already here, there, and everywhere. The following essay is preceded by a poem, it has another near the end, and a third poem serves as an end in itself. This may provide an opportunity to see more clearly the attempt to paint pictures of the whole. And so it is: I AM AN I AM!
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IGNORANCE We are tumbled on a new shore. In exhaustion, we crawl as children. In exuberance, we prance as adolescents. Raping the sensitivities of our elders, we wreck havoc on our gifts. We inherited a Dedicated Ignorance1 and a predilection for bad manners. Our only portal providing any hope is the gaining of sufficient experience to present that supreme gift of an informed choice, a choice in which we exercise a freedom complementing what is eternally already here. Only then can we hope to pay homage to our history, ourselves, and the Giver.2 It is not a lack of something, without which we cannot be whole; it is a potential that each one of us has within ourselves, a hidden treasure that we must discover and nurture, a gift from the infinite to be shared with the eternal. We are talking here of something essential, something personal, something unique that represents the lasting creative forces of the process of life. We are not pointing towards some other that we are longing to become, something other than without which we feel incomplete, stolen from, put upon, victimized by, because we dont posses it whatever it is; an orientation of being that others are gifted with, an object of our resentment, a fear, a fault that someone else is blessed to have or not have; that somehow, an I, a me, a you, are less than.
1 2

Dedicated Ignorance will be in Pebbles. Ignorance will be forthcoming in Pebbles on the Shore: A Collection of Poems.

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We are what we are, an I am! that stands as a willing expression of an essential piece of the Grand Mosaic, an integral part of the Grand Design, a self-possessing attribute of being that is uniquely ours and that we are responsible for at whatever level of self-ownership and creativity we can muster. We are only and always just responsible to the extent of our I am! IMAGE AND LIKENESS I am an I am! Pulled into being by my real selfish-self, Exuding an integrity of being, saying Yes! to all I am, becoming all that I can be, all that I must be, all that I am; a gift of the Giver, giving my me to my loving self, to all others and to my God. I am an I am!1 We cannot lament. We cannot cry out to the fullness of another and rage after that which we perceive as an essential that has been taken from us and must be given back. We cannot squander our time cursing the fates of history or the present. We are not entitled to someone elses body, land, or treasures. We are that singular manifestation of a Sacred Rock. We are that seeking after what is eternally already there within ourselves.2 We are those sequined selves,3 sharing life and light with ourselves, for and to ourselves, as witnesses for and to others, in the presence of the Divine.

1 2

Image and Likeness will be in Pebbles. See Being and Time by Martin Heidegger. http://amzn.to/GSUCsg 3 See The Phenomenon of Man, by Teilhard de Chardin. http://amzn.to/jyvTjO

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To waste our precious time-being in wild gesticulations, ranting and destroying things and others, is a foolish use of energy and effort. We are an opening, an offering of a sacrificial lamb to the other Sacrificial Lamb in a Holy Pageant of the loving power of a Divinity. We are, in our own way, the truth and the light, we are the beacons sharing our faith, our hope, and our love with each and every one of our fellow creatures of creation. We are thecocreators wrapped into the landscape of the infinite. Our only task is to plough selfs fertile soil so that we can enjoy the gift of self as we share our presence with others and our God. The Rauch is up! It is battering the tailings of my cloak. It is pushing me towards myself. I must utter my thank you. I must live praising the sacred All.1 The vast conundrum and tragedy of the species today is that most individuals do not know what the gifts and the problems of existence are, much less what to do about them. The vivid screams of the past and present are one of the greatest challenges the species must contend with. To maintain an appropriate relationship with our environment and ourselves, we are going to have to remember and focus on the absolute need to be a self and all that is entailed in maintaining a fidelity to what is eternally already there in me through me and by me as a volitional creature. When that volitional component of our being is lost; where am I? Where are you? To survive as an entity who exercises a will, we will have to be acutely aware of the choices that we make and how those
1

Rauch is Hebrew, meaning spirit or wind.

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choices complement what is who and what we really are as opposed to thinking we know who and what we really are. We are a can do that learns and remembers in the doing of the act of co-creating a self in the image and likeness of a gift of participation in being. We must forever avoid the seductive there being and become that admixture of a here being. EMBRACING With our Dedicated Ignorance we came to an age. Ensconced in pseudo-bucolic sensitivities of mid-century frivolity, unaware of the implosive dawning of a new world, we languished in a prolonged adolescence. Numbers and technics mounted an old horse garnished with the apocalyptic foreshadowing of a devolution of ourselves. Therein blossomed the idiocies of the arch-liberal and the intransigencies of the staid-conservative. These offer nothing to enable a growing understanding of personal and communal opportunities or an exercising of responsibilities in the sharing of our presence. Embrace, we must, the full spectrum of resources and other life on the planet earth! The time has come to plow the depths of our very nature, to emancipate the spirit and to act in love. We need to rededicate ourselves to ourselves, to our humankind self. We are the loving species!1
Embracing will likewise be found in Pebbles. Readers of the various volumes of Sign Posts may find the Poetry Collections helpful in divining insights for a deeper understanding of the human drama. http://amzn.to/gpHPRB
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