LOCATION,LOCATION,LOCATION

You know she* is everywhere here, from the deepest canyons to the highest manmade structure. You know where she came from. From the heart of the One Creator. You know where we came from: from the heart of the very same Source.

Why? For choices. Is it a game? Depends on your definitions. Is it folly? No. Is it caprice? No.

It says: ‘for He so loved the world.’

The Earth was made as one world among many, but one very special, and therefore, needing caretakers.

The caretakers though, have yet to pass the test. This is the ASVAB for stewards. We are failing. As a whole, we seem to care so little for our Earth Mother, that we tear her apart in order to make monuments in our own image and after our likeness… our vain imaginings.

Allow me to digress and grow personal for a bit.

I loved Iowa. Other than vacations to the Rocky Mountains, Manitowish Waters, Mammoth Cave, Chicago and one memorable trip to Boston, Iowa was my home. I did well there. Well enough anyway. Life was fairly calm and reasonable. Both typical and atypical in many of the ways of  family and marriage and jobs, when suddenly it all sort of imploded and I wound up with an ultimatum… move to Florida or else.

Like Ruth, whithersoever he went, I resolved to go.

Culture shock. Sunny south Florida was an instant nightmare for this Iowa country girl.

It took a while. I evolved. I grew into it. I learned to love it. It wasn’t a choice so much as a slow development of a comfort zone, creating home where I was, simply because that’s where I was. I made lifetime friends, and lost contact with the ones from Iowa. A few letters and a couple of phone calls, the twenty-five year class reunion, and slowly all contact ebbed away.

Several trips to Missouri to spend time with my transplanted family remnants: sister and dad, were as close as I got to the ‘homeland’ again.

Solo journeys out west on a sort of ‘walk-about’ mission expanded my view and my love of this beautiful land we call America. And when I went home, it was to Florida.

Ups and downs and poor choices that did not feel like choices but inevitabilities peppered the Florida experience with stories to tell and heartbreaks to heal.

But at some point, I realized how much I had grown to love South Florida. The heat can be difficult, but so can heat anywhere. The traffic can be annoying, but so can traffic anywhere. Hurricanes… well, you can plan for them, and are easier to live with than the suddenness of the tornados that season the Midwest with discomfort at times.

Another sudden implosion ignited an explosion that sent me alone, to make a new life in Tennessee. Why? Poor choices I thought, but in retrospect, Tennessee has been like going to school for a degree in a topic I had no interest in, although, I have found that now that ‘graduation’ approaches, I can see that as much as I have been harmed financially and emotionally by these six troubled years, I have been blessed to a much greater extent by the trials and the lessons and the contacts that I have experienced here. I often kid that the Chamber of Commerce will never hire me, since I have nothing good to say about Nashville, and that is true to an extent. This is a culture in which I have not been able to sink roots. It is a place to visit if one is so inclined. It is a little country town with big metropolitan aspirations, a little skyline of which they are every bit as proud as they are of their guitars and country music, Confederate history and the Civil War battles and graveyards that dot the landscape. The twang which many find enchanting, grates on my grammatical sensibilities and niggles its way into my own lexicon like a virus for which I have very little immunity.

In spite of being cheated and robbed and foreclosed and financially ruined, I have met and made friends with a handful of very special people that I will always hold dear in my heart and that I hope will also value me as a lifelong friend. I have met dogs that have touched me in ways that few others have. I have lost two thirds of my own dogs that moved here with me. I have had heartbreak. I have learned firsthand what depression is, I have dated idiots and some dear but troubled souls. I have made no significant romantic connections.

I waited. Long and determined, I waited for a burning bush to jump up in front of me and tell me what to do and where to go. Fearful of my own tendency to make poor decisions, I wanted the Creator to intervene and outline a path for me.

When it happened, it surprised me. The burning bush said it was up to me to make up my mind and decide where to go and then said my decision would be supported and I would continue to be blessed.

The temptation of Missouri is great. How I would love to spend time with my wonderful nephew, Eithan. He grows so fast. Each day his maturity astounds. At eight years old, he expresses great wisdom, caring and joy. He will be a fine steward.

And so, as I endeavor to downsize my accumulation of physical anchors that hamper my mobility, I pack and ready myself to go home. Prodigal? Yes, in a way. My path home to South Florida is my path to my future of greater mobility. Geographically dangling once again on what I enjoy referring to (if you will forgive my crudeness) as the penis of America, I shall fall back, re-group and ready myself for my next steps forward to the completion of my mission.

I remain a potted plant: unable to sink down roots into this wonderful land. The choices are many. I shall perhaps become a tumble weed.

No longer knee-jerking responses out of fear, my choices shall be determined by gratitude and love for that which has given me life in this beautiful land.

And that’s the thing. All parts of America and all parts of this Earth have great beauty. I acknowledge the beauty of everywhere I have lived and visited. I mourn the destruction mankind has wrought upon many areas and many life forms in it’s (their, our) endeavor to ‘have dominion’ and to egoistically make monuments to themselves and through force to have power over others.

I mourn, but I endeavor not to condemn. For to condemn, is to resist and to fight and when we resist and fight, that only makes the job harder. A muscle resisted grows stronger.

I have this container where I am sprouting seedlings from my citrus fruit. I imagine they will be unable to produce fruit themselves, but the foliage is cheery. One cold winter’s day I tossed the seeds of a pepper into the pot because I didn’t want to trudge to the compost bin. I forgot they were there. They knew where they were. They sprouted and grew and continue to grow, and now they bloom. Coddled indoors, without the weather to force strength into their stems, they are limp and weak as the tenderest vine. Will they be strong enough to fruit? I do not know. I simply have observed that this indoor protected, coddled placement has not given them their needed opportunity to be all they can be… to weather the storms of life: and yet, they continue to grow and to attempt to be productive. It is their nature.

Sometimes home is not the best place for us to grow. Remaining in a comfort zone does not expand our horizons much.

The joy and the beauty of this world are gifts from our Source and true stewardship is our duty to support that beauty with our choices.

Oh Eternal One, forgive me my poor choices and help me to make choices that bless.

So mote it be.

* ‘she’ refers to Mother Earth

A SEARCH FOR MEANING

My country ‘tis of Thee

Sweet land of liberty

Of Thee we sing

Land where our fathers died

Land of the pilgrims’ pride

From every mountainside

Let freedom ring

…

Great God, our King

This is a hymn of gratitude to God for bringing the oppressed Europeans out of the old country and into a new land. It was not meant to be a song worshiping the land itself.

This is a confusion based upon the poetical wording and a people’s tendency toward nationalism and tribalism.

These grateful European expats slaughtered the native people of the Americas in order to found their [our] new nation. Conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equally by the God of our fathers who brought them out of exile, they take over.

So what do they do? Rather than mixing and fitting in and living peaceably, they slaughter, and found an empire to rival all prior empires.

Somehow, our forebears assumed and passed on to us, a belief in superiority. Egotistically assuming that we are God’s favored people. What about ‘all men?’

Bible verse I Kings 3: 9 is known as a verse within Solomon’s Prayer where he asks God for wisdom and understanding to judge

… this Thy so great a people…

Long and long, I have misapprehended that one simple phrase. I think most of us who have read or studied the Bible have misunderstood great parts of it, simply because of word usage and multiple definitions.

Great: We can take it to mean large or we can take it to mean superlative.

I believe many of us in this instance take it to mean superlative, wonderful, special. Solomon though, is referring to the largeness of the population, as is earlier explained when he says they cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude [verse 8.]

Those of us who consider ourselves Christians and those who are Jewish generally mean well when we study the Bible. There are some who read it to find verses to support their ungodly behavior, and there are many who actually take each word literally without studying the words to determine what they mean. We make many assumptions, such as when Jesus tells us that the meek shall inherit the earth. In our current vernacular, we define meek as almost synonymous with weak, and therefore either discount the admonition or use it to justify inaction and complacency.  Whatever word in Jesus’ Aramaic language that was translated into meek, actually meant moderate. Moderate as opposed to extremist.

O woe is me. I have always defined myself in part, as a patriot. God Bless America.

All well and good, however, I have recently discovered that the extreme form of patriotism is nationalism and I have long tended to lean in that direction. And that direction is extremist.

I love America, I am grateful to God for America, for our Founding Fathers and their wisdom and for our documents upon which our nation is based. Politically, I have become a constitutional conservative and a moderate [neither Left nor Right]

I honor and respect our flag, sing our songs by heart and say the pledge of allegiance and place my hand over my heart. I have taken that oath many times and I take it seriously.

If you don’t love it, then leave it.

The importance of America to the world is based upon the liberty and principles stated in our Declaration of Independence. The format of the nation as set up in the Constitution is indisputably crucial to maintaining a free country. And yet, today, many people have not read it, and many who have misunderstand it, particularly those such as Madeline Murray O’Hare and others who do not think for themselves but find some mouthpiece to follow and become a groupie thereunto have done much damage.

So now, I am attempting to discern how to be patriotic without being nationalistic.

Like Solomon, and like others in Judeo-Christian history, after coming out of exile, leaders seek power, wealth and protection and these are the fundamental building blocks of empire.

How to have successful civilization without empire?

Lets’ take a look at the movie AVATAR. Watch it and re-watch it. It’s a think piece beyond the pure entertainment value.

The meanings of words change over time. Like meat marinating in seasoned juices, words marinate within the bodies of the cultures in which they are the medium of communication.

We must bear that in mind  and think for ourselves for the betterment of all.