Les Brown - Live Full, Die Empty

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Women are Sacred

WOMEN are sacred. Rape is such a spite at the preciousness of life, such an eroding of all that is good and pure and amazing about the gift of life. I mean wow, women have made every single person on this planet. We grew them in our bodies. Every man came out of a women; it's that way round.

I look at this world and I see life and it's mothers.

And yet the arrogance of men, the rule of men, the disenfranchising of women by men; their regulation to second class citizens in so much of the world, or even 'less than rats' as a victim said in the congo - is just awful.

I am not an object. I'm AMAZING. I'm powerful.

SO much of society tries to erode that power; the control of the state, of the banks, of religion, of law of family, of the media. Everything saying I am inadequate in some way; I have not got enough money or enough points, enough insurance, enough education...

Men have involved themselves with killing and death for thousands of years - they're not experts in life; in creation - that's us... We're the experts in creativity We're the ones that keep life going, that sustain it, that nurture it around us - the same way we nurture hope in the hopeless.

Women ARE sacred; we should expect respect for our sacredness in all our interactions; when we meet others, when we see ourselves in the mirror, when we're in a shop or on the street or doing business. We should be walking tall, swaying our life giving hips.

Rape made me close up like a bud that instead of opening tried to go in reverse. It made me turn all that sacredness around; sacredness that was supposed to spread outwards, to ripple and undulate, to bathe and blossom, to delight and deepen. It made me stop enjoying my inner beauty, that develops as you grow into a woman, as you grow older, as your hair greys and your eyes get so far seeing they see through time and beyond.

Women are SACRED; holy, blessed, sanctified, divine, whole, a temple, complete, kedushah or holiness (something/one that is set apart in a respectful manner), graceful, protected, defended, guarded, inviolate, inviolable. And yet the definition of 'sex' is 'intercourse between animate beings. coitus, copulation, fornication, intercourse, reproduction.' The definition for 'making love is to 'have sex - be intimate,breed, copulate, fool around, fornicate, f***, go all the way, go to bed with, have sexual intercourse, have sexual relations, lay, make out, mate, procreate, screw, sleep together.'

There is nothing of the sacred here in these words for something that is special, beautiful, magical, unifying, creative, passionate, joyful, blissful, spiritual, respectful, sensitive, surprising, funny, insightful, wonderful, sensual, reciprocal, gentle, ecstatic, exciting, loving..

It's been rendered mechanic; it's no wonder women are treated as objects if this is how our society consistently refers to the act of union, of creating life.

We need to re-divine ourselves.

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Buying Britain Back

The bun above is called a 'Devonshire Split' for those that don't know

Recently for some inescapable daft reason the Uk's government revealed plans (i.e.we were the last to know) to sell off half the country's forest. Unfortunately the MP pushing this is in cohoots (apparently don't ask me who the source is) with the Biotech industry. I thought Ents were just a fictitious entity - thought up by Tolkien but now it seems there's a possibility after all of hybridised tree people...

So, I thought well, there's some very well intentioned land trusts, and Britain really ought to be in British hands. Locals should have access to and responsibility for their local forests. Potentially an ecologically sustainably managed forest has many dividends:-

• People can live in low impact dwellings there
• Forest gardens can be grown providing a higher yield per acre than anything Monsanto can cobble together with chemicals and a DNA shoestring.
• Composting coppice waste can provide natural gas to power cars, generators, heating, lighting etc. Check out the film Bate's car
• They can still produce wood to the degree they do now under the industrialised model, but in a safer, more balanced and long term manner for all creatures.
• Profits can be reinvested locally rather than siphoned off to Mr MultiBillionaire in AbuDhabi or Bombay or on his little island.

It goes on - the dividends that is. So, my idea is to get locals, like kids, scouts, schools, businesses to invest co-operatively and buy shares in their local area. They will then be able to safeguard their countryside from golf courses, holdiay camps, open cast mining and the generally degenerate intentions of multinationals.
They will be able to participate, and benefit from primary and secondary products. A forest garden produces, wood, fodder, fuel, vegetables, mushrooms, herbs, fruit, nuts, honey, candles, soaps - you name it you can get it from a forest garden, I mean that is after all where pretty much everything comes from that we need.

Kids will learn directly about how they meet their basic needs. Communities will become more self sufficient. Then they can channel their spare time and energies into well creativity, art, sculpture, music, invention, and yes maybe even Space!

They will be healthier, people will be at less risk from golf ball injuries and flying golf clubs flung by stressed out politicians who didn't get their way after all because the People, yes, them the great Downtrodden peasants - did uprise, and rose up and done away with the bill that wasn't in everyone's best interests. And they did take back their countryside that had been nicked from them in the first place by the Army and which their great grandfathers had lost their heads for.
That's the difference between Britain and France. In France it was the People who lopped off the heads of the ones who'd nicked everything up to then, whereas in Britain the royals were crafty folk and their trusting servants lost their heads FIRST and it's been that way ever since. We STILL trust them to know what their doing and then we find ourselves headless, or homeless, or mortgaged up to the hilt with high blood pressure and a shorter life span and wondering how it got that bad.

So you can join the FB group here 'Buy Britain Back' and choose how and why and what way you will buy it back. If you're not British and you want to help us - Great! You're always welcome for a cup of tea and to reminisce about old times when we had back bone, and new times when we took up our laptops and did battle for our freedom and fair green valleys once again, albeit with a multicultural appreciation that comes from having left the place or arrived their afresh from some place else.

You can learn how to set up a co-operative and or land trust. Which is what the big companies and the government also did, to hide the fact they bought our neighbourhoods and treasured places as collateral for giant loans to fund space missions, wars and hadron colliders. And now they have to pay it back... except they're saying it's because of a 'financial crisis'. Oh really, a financial crisis caused by what, oh yes, a TEN YEAR war where hundreds of thousands of pounds explodes everytime you blow up a missile, where suicide bombing is encouraged by foreign occupation, to what; TO SECURE THE OIL and it's PIPELINE. And where three to five times the amount of military killed are civilians and most of them children.

My point being we have to concentratre on where we are at; get strong, get sustainable. Because if you're not sustainable you ARE on a sinking ship that WILL sink. Get together pull a sofa outside, watch the sunset, listen to songs from the laptop and guitar round a fire, full up after you're deliciously organic scrumptious local meal, of easy to grow potatoes, carrots, and wotnot. And then there's the home brews, of damson and nettle wines, of mead and hoppy beers, of strawberry champagnes. The kids are QUIET because they've been outdoors ALL day and are ASLEEP. OMG, and there's not an unruly dubious chemical insight to disturb their precious equilibrium. And all this is like this because Grandma took out a share in the local forest which made the town totally economically sustainable and self sufficient for EVER. And they are now planning space missions because their aren't any starving people left on the planet as we finally got our priorities right. Check it out grandma, grandpa, uncle You...

Here's to co-ops, and land trusts,and communities who give a damn. And to ginger beer, and Devonshire Splits (see above apparently random photograph). Personally I would like Devonshire to remain unsplit, and all it's forests to remain Devonian, and not sold off like football players. NOT FOR SALE is my goal and cherished wish - actually for the whole entire planet but one patch of a mossy ground at a time eh! Now where's my pitchfork?

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This guy is a winner!

I take my loser's hat off to Sean Stephenson
This guy is a winner! :)

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Inspiring relief for Haiti Parts 1 and 2 - Earthships by Michael Reynolds

http://earthship.com/haiti
'Earthship recon crew in Haiti: June 30 - July 5, 2010. The Earthship Biotecture recon visit to Haiti. As it turned out it was much more than a recon visit... (they) built a building with the help of forty Haitians from the tent camps - ages four to fifty.'

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The Sea of Madness

Murphy's principal home!

Sometimes I feel like I am in a sea of absolute madness. I look around me and everyone is each individual or community is in their own version of reality, everyone's priorities are different according to their own often crazy considerations and typical responsibilities. Teams of people gather together in companies to adhere to the mission statement of that company, or charity or group. I am wondering where do I start? Where do you begin in the sea of madness when you yourself, no doubt, have your own neuroses?

My first thought some years ago was that I did not want to participate in, to hold up or to contribute to the madness. I could see though that everything was connected. It appeared that whether I liked it or not, if I wanted to be in this society, my participating in it would also contribute to child labour, to pollution, to conflict, violence, corruption and the whole off-putting scaffold. Yet there's a balance; whole hives of people working away in a fever in the opposite direction; picking up the war torn, the abused and attempting to put their lives back together again in some semblance of normality.

And yet they still participated in the madness, they bought coffee from coffee shops whose plantations employed children and paid a pittance and polluted the land. They bought oil from companies who didn't clean up after themselves, cared more for profit than the environment and people's well being. They bought clothing from people who'd bought it from employers of ten year old's who spent their entire lives crouched in small rooms in India, for little more than bowls of rice; they were old men within months. They bought food from supermarkets who had bought it from farmers who knowingly called their produce 'crap', genetically modified corn that eroded cows stomachs when they were fed it and caused them to die prematurely because of acidosis and then the cows were also sold to us in burger form. And we are dying early.

We are dying early from cancer that came from radiation that came from nuclear power stations that had melt downs or leaked toxic waste into the water supply without telling us, from which we also bought our electricity, our hot water, our lighting. The same companies who supply scientists their radioactive elements to be used in bomb tests - almost 2000 nuclear bomb tests around the world - though who knows how many China has carried out - how many do you need to find out they kill people? Russia has used them to plug oil leaks, and our children are dying early.

The medical profession does what it can but they are constrained to use what the pharmaceuticals provide and it is provided by the same companies whose motive is profit. They are also forced to go where the work is; research depends on research budgets not what is most important because as we know people's priorities differ.

Everyone is concerned ultimately with keeping a roof over their heads and looking after their loved ones. But while we are participating in this sea of madness - it will continue to throw insanity at us.

I stopped participating for a long time, in a variety of ways, not all skill ful and some more rewarding than others. Then I just let go and floated on all the mayhem. Neither saying this is good or this is bad nor worrying too much about what others thought I looked like. I just floated and watched.

Priorities...

Children starving is a priority. Animals and plants going extinct is a priority. Children dying because their environments and therefore their bodies are so laden with chemicals that they cannot breathe - is a priority. Children stepping on landmines, or picking them up and playing with them - is a priority And every which way I look, these are priorities which are being overlooked because we have our own priorities.

Well, it's a strange thing... to be in the position, where I don't want your priorities any more. I don't want to get married, have kids, buy a house, run a car, work for a company, go on holiday...

I want a new set of priorities. You might think I'm mad. You might think I'm anarchic, some folk might even call me criminal. So be it.

Give me an option of participating in a society that is cruelty free. Give me an option to participate in a society that is radiation and pollution free. Give me an option to participate in a society that is conflict free... and I will participate.

Give me an option to be harmless and I will gladly join you on that sea of madness.

I apologise if I look a little unwilling, or unenthusiastic about simple things, in daily life that we all of us do. It's just I have stopped a second to consider the ramifications; to ponder on the consequences of my actions. If I join in and am a good tax paying citizen, then $400000 of our collective tax will buy a missile to blow up a handful of Taliban, and potentially some other folk nearby, perhaps some other kids playing behind a wall. I don't want to blow up people to secure the oil line running through their country, so that another country doesn't get it because ostensibly that country is not a democracy. I'm afraid I don't see any democracies anywhere any more; I see capitalism in the guise of democracy. If you still see democracy - great - please offer me encouraging and reassuring examples to remind me.

It appears that almost every action has negative consequences often because it is attached to money and the acquisition of money, because nowadays money is dirty; it is hard to find 'clean' money.

If I join society and have a 'good job' I wonder where shall I put my money? The system is making it very hard to be outside of it. But I don't trust the system, it has never particularly earned my trust. What is a 'good job' now?

We all muddle along as best we can. It's naive of me isn't it to propose the possibility of a harmless society. There was a time when we had far less capacity to hurt each other than we do now. We have become a society whose trademark is our knowing the most ways to hurt and dispatch another human being; great.

To me growing vegetables is a rebellious act, having your own water supply is absolute anarchy in its purest form, turning your back on the energy producers and saying 'I don't want' is capitalist blasphemy; while you lie in the sun and put on an extra pullover when it gets cold. 'I don't want...'

What I don't want is clear, but that's boring, negative stuff. I want a computer that is blood free, conflict free, pollution free. To type this on. I don't care if it takes you another millennia to get to that point - fine. Let's go back to a horse drawn society until we do. Lets skip the part where we are obliged to be the bad guys.

TOO many people are dying; it appears some folk want it that way.

Go raw because you live longer; help the poor because it's humanitarian. Right now we should instigate the Law of Harmlessness and show by degrees how much blood we have or have not got on our hands because of the decisions we make as individuals and communities. I am not a good person. I am a bad, bad person. Why? I only have to look over my shoulder at the ramifications of my existence... forests cut down to provide toilet paper, landfills full up with my left overs and batteries and building waste, my sewage in the sea, foaming up on the beaches; and starving people in the Horn of Africa, in the Sahel, skeletal childen who have spent their entire lives at a war that was not of their making - a war encouraged by foreign policies that I wish to have no part of. A war of ideas and ideologies, that ordinary folk can do without - we are quite capable of living together, of shaking hands, of offering sugar to our neighbour when they've run out. Ordinary people are very very good at being peaceful and warless. If we can just be left alone.

Today I discussed with a friend that now it is a law that you must have a licence to chop wood. The local wood deliverer cannot deliver this year because he cannot get someone to cut wood. All the people who used to cut the wood, cannot because they have not got a licence, though they have always cut the wood.

My mother cannot use her trailer because she needs a licence, she has a licence but its English, she has not got a French licence. The Tax office sent a letter wanting to know if this is my principal home or my secondary home. I sat and thought about this.

Is it my principal home? Or my secondary home.

Is this planet our principal home or our secondary home?

I wondered where home was.

I have had many homes.

I slept on a glacier on an icecap, watched the Northern lights, I slept in a carpark next to a motorway, I slept on a ferry in a storm, I slept under a horse's cart, in a hammock next to a Roman wall, I slept on the edge of a mountain. I slept in a sleeping bag outside Holloway Prison. I slept in a debris hut I built out of fallen leaves and bits of branches; it did not need damp proofing, or a foundation or a new roof, I was snug as a bug.

I pulled the loose bits of hawthorn and blackthorn down from the hedge, built a small fire and heated up a pot for a cup of tea. Picked coltsfoot and scraped some white willow for my friend who had a cough. We collected field mushrooms for an omelette, and I picked wild greens, there were plums growing along the wayside. And the tastiest blackberries you ever had. I gave the horse a brush down, and we collected our water from a spring.

Is this my principal home or my secondary? I am confused. It is right that I should be confused. How mad am I? Am I more or less mad than the normal folk who do such a good job of participating in society? Sometimes I do a good job, sometimes I'm terrible at it. I'm glad there's still a bit of room to be both, although in the eyes of the powers that be, me and Africa it would seem are the poorest of the poor. They look down at us over their piles of paper. And the neighbours worry because we are different. Because we don't DO anything. The same way we didn't do anything for a million years. Sometimes doing nothing is a beautiful thing, you do nothing and there is life, it grows, you do nothing and there are planets, a galaxy, a cosmos, a universe.

Should we all take to the fields? No, that's not what I'm saying. That's not the point I'm making.

We should though bring the fields to us. We should pull them round our shoulders like blankets, we should let poppies grow out of our hair and moss cover our fingers and toes. We should learn to feel the starlight make its way through our skin and into our blood stream so that it twinkles inside of us. We should be willing to smell of the earth. To use bluebells as legal tender; to make sure the weeds grow tall and strong so that there is nectar, and bugs and bees and birds and the sweet smell of clover, the song of the skylark.

A mug, a pot and a spoon. A sower of seeds, an old growth forest. I saw an owl last night, the moon was up and Venus was shining bright. The owl is participating in society along with the mouse. I wondered what their principal home was. If you want to speak to me, you will probably find me with leaves in my hair. I will pick comfrey for broken bones and if I die of exposure it will more likely be from those elements I was exposed to on the Sea of Madness than because of me and mother earth. That is my point.

I am I think a conscientious objector.

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'Where there are dolphins there are rarely sharks?'

I am truly encouraged to see positive responses to extremism happening all around the world. The book burners are being drowned out by folk giving away the Quran. The extremist and prejudiced folk are being told they should be the ones going to self-help groups (at least I just said that anyway).

'Where there are dolphins - there are rarely sharks' Angela Shelton

And here there are dolphins. There are dolphins swimming and jumping through the waves of violence all over this planet. Dolphins like Andrea Gibson the poet who should have more news coverage than almost any other person. We need her words like dried up hearts need liquid love tsunamis.

I was thinking this morning about the whole 'coming out thing'. Do you expect straight people to 'come out' as straight? No, of course not; well why should anyone else 'come out'. It's you people who are uncomfortable in your prejudice that need to come out. You need to admit you have a problem whether it's 'I am a racist or I am homophobic' whatever form of prejudice or hatred it is.

Being gay is natural, it is inconsequential.

Being racist/homophobic/mysoginist/any-ism however is unnatural and has negative consequences. You need to deal with your issues. You really need to sort it out.

I hate to have to give you a geography lesson but I think its necessary.

There are 6billion other people apart from yourself living in this floating round house and every single one of them is different from you, we're all unique, each of us has our own internal galaxies.

I think we need an intervention on a massive scale. I looked for resources to help racists, or homophobes willing to consider recovery; but mostly I could only find books for therapists. You could say there is a huge gap in the market right there. Maybe if we generate a cultural trend of expecting them to address and recover from their issues such an actuality will occur

One book I happily stumbled across was 'Healing - A journal of tolerance and understanding' by Mohammed Ali

"If today's world is to be truly healed, that healing must be achieved one person at a time. The tolerance and understanding necessary to heal must come from each and every one of us, arising out of our everyday conduct, until decency reaches a flood tide." Mohammed Ali

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The hypocrisy of democracy and capitalism and an exit strategy

My FB friend said 'I hate negativity' and I pointed out that as much as I agreed, it was an oxymoron as hate is negative. She then went onto say that it was intended as a statement against hypocrites! A valuable observation.

Sometimes on Facebook or here I will post subjects or perspectives that are negative; the suffering of others, of the earth is not a positive subject. I am angry against injustice. Again anger is not necessarily positive; it can be confrontational and immediately put people on the defensive if they think it is directed at them. When anger is directed at injustice, at a behaviour, or anger arising as frustration at the lack of options; is such anger negative or is it an opportunity for change, a powerful uprising of energy that can shift previously insurmountable obstacles.

I guess it depends on how it is used. Often we internalise it or project it onto others un-skillfully. How do we learn to USE it?

Some how I think society forces us to be hypocritical. It is very very hard these days to make original, unblemished choices that aren't affected some way by a multitude of things we don't all know about.

I speak out against violence against women - but I write on a laptop and speak on a phone made with coltan secured by the FDLR of the Congo; who rape women and children thus dominating local villages and scaring the men folk enabling them to retain possessions of the mines that provide the coltan/gold/metals in return for their weapons.

I eat food provided by oil driven transport, use clothing carried on it - in fact its hard to find anything untouched by oil - yet I speak out against the oil industry. We ask for ethical options and choices but they're often prohibitive.

You can only go organic/eco if you have land, time or the money. Not if you're forced to rent, living on credit or similar situations that apply to most of us. (Try co-housing/housing co-operatives/land trusts btw as a positive alternative)

I am angry at the hypocrisy that is forced upon us. Is anger always negative? Are we all submissive to a far greater hypocrisy that we are obliged to somehow disentangle ourselves from - is it possible to be free of it and to honestly have a free choice?

We can try. I'm sure it is measurable, our integrity? To know for sure we have to pare down how we relate with the world to actions that are clear and within our authority. We have to build positive relationships with others (who are also integrating in an ethical manner) that are the means for sustaining ourselves.

There is no option to choose being unsustainable - because ultimately that is finite. So the only choice is transitioning to being sustainable in all the ways this pertains - being nice to each other for one...

This is a truth, a fundamental - its like Gandhi's concept of Satyagraha or 'holding to the truth' that he defeated the British occupation of India with. Because the truth was - it was unjust. The truth of injustice, of the unsustainable and unethical are never hard to see all though I think there is a concerted effort whether it is intentional or not) to pool the wool over the eyes of the masses, of the general public as though we are so many sheep.

So on the back of that, of understanding we have a choice between injustice or justice, between the sustainable or unsustainable - we can stand firm and direct our wills in one direction; towards justice, sustainability and integrity.

Its about being human, not whatever identity we might narrow that field to; be it religion or nation or whatever; they might be our personal values, but in living together on this planet into the future, in making a better world those things are secondary. Life is a priority everyone's lives. Human rights were designed to stop the progression of prejudice into intolerable cruelty it's about time we learned to adhere to them.



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