Mental Shift

Heading to Porter Square after eye exam. That means a trip on the Red Line to and then Red to Orange back. I realized that I that the mental schema of local travel is no longer based on the Red Line as the primary route. My mental map of traveling via the subway finally is based on the Orange Line. My sense of local travel has finally made the shift from being based on the Red Line to the Orange Line.

For years getting around Boston presumed a leg on the Red Line. I lived, worked and frequently played off the trunk of the Red Line. Living in JP that has changed.

Why mention this? Because as I walked to the Red Line platform I could sense that I mo longer see this mine as the main route of my travels.

It took only a year and a half. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

Pilgrimage

The annual pilgrimage at Provincetown is complete. At because Ptown is not a Mecca or axis mundi. It is not a specifically holy place like the Jewish Temple or Church of the Holy Sepulchre. No relics of bone or flayed skin or saints skulls Ptown, while a sweet and beautiful place in its own right, is still a place.

What justifies the signifier pilgrimage is that the Roundup is the only time of the year that I experience a sense of complete safety, inclusion and, not to sound too sacharine, unconditional love.

That makes departing from the Roundup inevitably sad. Letting go each year the sense of community and inclusion is always to feel twinge of grief.

The power of these five days is evident in that I will for the next few mentally float back to the view of the harbor at sunrise, the dinners, the workshops, the comradship and companonship of so many. It is the closest I come to a monastic experience of communal immersion.

To merely walk out the door and immediately step into a flow of spirits all loose and flowing and safely settled in our own little safe harbor is an experience that is worthy of longing. It is the closest I have come to knowing Peace on Earth.

Fens get Patrolled while Boston is Destroyed

Response to current BPD patrols in the Fens.

Boston has roving gangs that beat people up. Gangs attack houses on Halloween with by bombing them with eggs. Neighborhoods are badgered and harrased by boom-boom cars. Ear splitting motorcycles damage any quiet that remains. Cars are regularly broken into. Yet the BPD has the money to spend patrolling the Fens?

It would be far better if the Fens were no longer a cruising area. Their bee like activity is a bizarre contrast against the order and beauty of the gardens. They leave gross litter. But the men cruising in the Fens are not beating up random people or trying to destroy neighborhoods by making them sound like battle zones.

If the BPD has plenty of money and can afford to provide complete attention to the material problems of the city then by all means turn the Fens into a police zone. But if the money is not there then use what funds exist to deal with the violence and problems that affect the city as a whole.

Whoops – forgot. It’s an election year. Only what buys votes this year will get more than bare attention.

What I think about Aglicans, Episcopals and the Tommyrot about Gays in Church

The article gives too much credence to Mr. Williams’ position. He is the ecclesiastical head of only the Anglican Church and not the Episcopal Church. While a pope can excommunicate a Catholic, and the Mormon president can shun a Mormon, in theory removing any rights given by the religious affiliation, Mr. Williams has no ecclesiastical authority to force an Episcopal individual out of their church.

As for the controversy regarding gays in positions of authority the controversy is only generated by the adult-children who play the game of “you play by my rules or the game is over” sort.

The conservative members belie their utterly non-Christian values. By turning what by Biblical standards is picayune into the greatest controversy since American slavery they show that their concerns with the poor and disenfranchised take second place to their obsessive mania with sexuality.

Homosexuality and women’s equality both present one absolute challenge: the challenge of power. When women are equal to men, when men and women can choose social roles that are not slavish to roles of dominance and submission, then the fundamental power of conservative religious is threatened at its core.

It is this threat to power that turns religious conservatives, whether Anglican from Nigeria or Catholic from Rome or Protestants from mega churches into foaming at the mouth fanatics.

Today’s Political Rants

On Face the Nation Senator Sessions complains that Judge Sotomayor shows a quality of IMPARTIALITY. So Senator Sessions never heard of Anton Scalia?

Mormon security guard complains that two men who hugged and, gasp, kissed each other, were displaying inappropriate behavior. The guard said public displays of affection are not allowed on Mormon property. Don’t know nothin’ ’bout their god but the god that made me designed me for affection, to hug and kiss the people I love, to show them in tangible, tactile ways that I love them and cherish them and value them. The Mormon god is a cold hearted, nasty, suffocating deadening god. Too bad for the Mormons.

Justice Dismissive

Why is Tony Scalia such a jerk? Because he wanted to be a Cardinal, and even the first American Pope, but had to settle for Supreme Court Justice.  Why else would he act and speak in gross, insulting, offense, dismissive, and ultimately, conduct himself in a manner which is beneath the dignity of a Supreme Court Justice.

The context is a research project that a Fordham professor charged his students to complete.  Find whatever data you can about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia by using the web.  They developed a dossier of 15 pages.

Why Tony the Supremette?  Because Tony believes that there is no need to be concerned with privacy.  Everything is public; there is no right to privacy.   Whether in the bedroom, or on the web, Americans have no legal right to privacy.  All belongs to all.

So the professor decided to take Tony at his word and show to anyone interested just how little privacy now exists for any one individual now that the world’s intelligence is linked as one (i.e, the world wide web.)

Well, Tony never to outdone by pen or tongue, declines to directly respond to this research project.  A project that shows that thanks to the web way too many details of our lives are available to anyone who wants to know where we shop, who we pay, or where we live.  But nevertheless, in the finest of passive-aggressive manners, through a spokesperson states,

“It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said. Prof. Reidenberg’s exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any.”

What is wrong here?  Tony was outdone.  Tony was given an example of why privacy is more important today than ever.  His typically dismissive attitude toward privacy, or any other matter concerning individual liberty, was proven at best wrongheaded, poorly considered, or just plain wrong.  (Which of course if impossible since His Worshipful Tony Scalia is never wrong).

Instead of a) either just shutting up (but how can an ego as fat as Tony’s just stay quiet) or to directly engage the professor, Tony resorts to ad hominen attack against the person. Instead of addressing the issue directly Tony does the only thing he knows when he is wrong: acts like a jerk.

Instead of acting like an adult, the tubby Supreme dithmithes the natty nay sayers who, God forbid, might disagree with the great and powerful Supremette.

No More Dick

The employer decides that you’re no longer needed.  No matter the hurt or anger, ultimately the response is to move on. Why then does Dick Cheney continue to pollute the political dialog?

Dick was VP for 8 years. For those 8 years Dick bludgeoned government and justice until they served his Dictator’s purpose.  He (and his assistant, George) led us, like the Pied Piper leading the children to the doom, to our doom, The Great Recession.

Dick was the man in charge; Dick was always the man in charge. So why won’t the soul sucking Vice President of Dictatorship simply go away?

Perhaps because if Dick was to follow the footsteps of his predecessors then he might have to face up to himself. Perhaps Dick fears that God will lead Dick down the same road as his hero to Alzheimer’s Oblivion?

Or maybe Dick is simply a power addicted zombie who has lost complete touch with reality and still believes that he is President?

Repeat after me: See Dick Run. See Dick Run from reality. See Dick run from truth. See Dick run from justice. See Dick Run.

The CIA Does not Mislead the President

Leon Panetta states “But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress.”  First that raises challenging questions concerning war crimes against George W. Bush, former President.  Did the United States attack a soveriegn nation for legitimate reasons?  Did the CIA provide information that indicated that Iraq was going to wage a war of terror and mass destruction?

If the CIA provided false information to the Bush administration concerning Iraq then Mr. Panetta is incorrect.  If the CIA provided truthful information (i.e., no evidence of justifying an invasion) then the Bush administration if guilty of war crimes.

When the stink of the world pervades

If your nostrils are full of stink,
And you want to smell as sweet as pink.

Get Laxmi Dhoop
It wards away the poop

Soft and pliable, of oils and peat.
Sandlewood and herbs, it’s so sweet.

Ashes to Ashes

Seeing the ashes on office workers last Wednesday reminded me of how much I am out of touch with the religious calendars. Ash Wednesday is part of the calendar along with all the notable days up to and including Easter.

We have really two religious periods by and large in the Xian branch of religion: Advent climaxing in Christmas and Lent climaxing in Easter. One is celebratory and weighted with a ton of trappings. The other, lighter, far less gravitation force, much more contemplative – appropriate given the subject matter.

Filling it out what we have is the buildup starting just before Thanksgiving now, rising to its peak and denoument at Christmas and New Years, followed by a lull, followed by a lift somewhere in February or March to remind us that Easter nears. Along with Easter coming closer follows Spring. For any in the north that is the resurrection that is felt in the bones: when Winter finally loosens its grasp and Spring, full or meek, is still sovereign.

Then the rest of the year is a religious summer, a vacation from the froth of Christmas and the great solemnity of Easter.

Are they sufficient? Are these religious festivals, ending the old year and beginning the new sufficient to the soul’s need? Do we need more religious holidays?

Some would be cry lunacy to wonder whether more religious festivals are needed. Isn’t it under the guise of religion that we so often show our worst toward the stranger our neighbor? The one we don’t understand?

Perhaps then what is needed is a religious festival which, pardon the reference, could be part of the tradition of “festivus.” Only it would be a religious festival that does not use the rituals and formulas that more or less anchor human culture back into various levels of ancient past. Instead it would use the essence of the present to help us see where, what and who we are today.

Most of us have a hard time looking at ourselves. Is it any easier to do collectively? But if we were able to draw essential pictures of where we are, incorporate them into the projections liturgy and ritual, perhaps we then would be more able to more fully grasp out collective identities.

This is not a replacement for the religions of that tie us through the centuries. Instead it could be practice that happens within the religious structures but which allows us to step outside ourselves in order to examine ourselves.

Pie in the sky of course. Exepting the minority most religious leaders and followers are terrified of the anxiety that accures to stepping outside the comfortable, well trodden traditions and customs. Better to look to the same mirror and effectively repeat the same words and actions, no matter how rote they become, then to use the power of the religious instinct to actually ask who are we today and where are we going?

Religion is many things, it is binding, it is worshipping a deity, it is projecting outside one self and into a larger whole.

Can we truly project ourselves and into a larger whole if the larger whole is the shell of the past? We read don’t pour new wine into an old wineskin. Are we takingt the wine of our lives and pouring it into old wineskins when we limit ourselves to old rituals that are ignorant of the substance of what surrounds us today?