The Labyrinth’s Prayer

 

Our Labyrinth, which is on earth

Elliptic is your name

Your hospitality come

Your turning be done 

in earth

As it is in the universe.

Give us this day our contemplation.

And forgive us our missteps

As we forgive others their missteps against us.

And lead us not into apathy

But deliver us from hasty judgement.

For yours is the journey

The purpose and the story

For ever and ever.

Ah women

And men.

(from Infinite Power, Janet Vickers. Ekstasis 2016)

We Are Not Great Although We May Be Heroes At Times

We are humans. This is a safe generalization if you can read and you are not artificial intelligence. If you are the latter please feel free to disregard this post. If you are human - welcome!

The notion of being great is not a verifiable truth. Great is a response when something good happens. There are many who have achieved what I could never dream of achieving. Thank you to those that have.

For everyone else, whatever your particular skill or discipline or talent, I thank you for making the world a better place - that is if your skill doesn't hurt anyone unnecessarily for no good reason.

If you are a dentist, a surgeon or a nurse, some things must hurt before they are healed.

The kind of hurting that has no healing in it, is bullying, judging, labelling, putting people in boxes, insulting, threatening - usually has no value and is usually a habit learned from systems designed to take away the dignity of some, for the sake of profit for a minority.

Yes of course arresting someone who is a threat to the innocent, hurts someone. It takes a lot of training and humility to work in any capacity that wields power over others for the greater good.

All powers come with responsibility and there are many regrets I had for hurting others, when I had the power to do so. I am not great.

It's really okay to not be great. It's okay to not win, to be wrong sometimes, to make mistakes.

I remember when I started work at 16, the man who gave me lifts to and from the office, once said that I was attractive. And I replied, thank you, but I'm not a stunning beauty!!

Where on earth did I get the idea that I should be? Who in my family said I should be a movie star or beauty queen?

No-one personally but the messages I absorbed so gullibly from television sit coms and commercials and fashion outlets and make-up counters at the drug store, was that I should try harder. Some memes even promised that I would turn heads if I used their products. Although I knew these commercial promises were not to be believed, I didn't understand how they collectively  formed my values.

All this proves that I was gullible, and that there were few opportunities to challenge these powerful messages, for a 16 year old.

I write this to say the notion of greatness, the idea that we should be better than everyone else, not just to strive, is dangerous. This is how we create the kind of society that alienates us, that enables structural violence like homelessness, poverty, alienation, that makes us complicit in bigotry and racism.

The Crone

She              is 

                                                                          solid 

                                                                         and her limbs

                                                                                          like an old tree

                                                                                           are thick 

                                                                                          with memory

                                                                                                   Her beauty 

                                                                                                   is not in her curves

                                                                                                       — but her voice

                                                         She cuts 

                                                                    through posture

                                           with a coarse elegance

                                                     her lips spilling facts

                                                                                     as a handful of cherries

                                                                                      might bleed 

                                                                      under the weight

                                                                            of a dictionary

                                                        She writes poems

                                                                                                     sharp as toenails

                                                                                                   yellow as nicotine

                                                  Ha! 

                                                              She cackles 

                                                    over the washing machine

                                                       spinning its gears

                                                                        Beauty is in the wet linens

                                                                        spent in a silent tub

                                                                        table cloths on top of underwear

                                                                       Water wrung out of it all

                                                                       clothes, flesh, dreams

                                                                             and plans

She has done what she came to do

and there is still more mischief                                        to be done.

(from Sleep With Me: Lullaby for an Anxious Planet. Janet Vickers. Ekstasis 2020)

Stop!

 

"If we can learn anything from Bissonnette’s horrible crimes, it’s that we need to fight right-wing extremism, whether in fringe organizations or on mainstream media platforms, and not expect it to go away now that Donald Trump’s presidency is over." Nora Loretto, National Observer

Bissonnette - was the young man who went into a Mosque in Quebec and murdered six people sitting in prayer. 

He was wrong, he is a murderer, but worse than that are the systems which leave many people alienated. It's no accident. Power massages the vulnerable aspects of human nature by holding up the contemptuous results.

Stop treating the universe as though it's a game. Stop treating this planet and all the varied forms of life who depend on its survival, as though it is a toy. Stop pretending that humanity is in control, that we are the highest form of life and that everything is here to serve us. 

Stop glorifying the trinkets we have made as though it's proof of our supremacy, and worth more than all of nature born and created by the life that came before us. 

Stop speaking of this vast, complicated, creative network of vibration and light as though it was born from one anthropomorphized deity, who needs our prayers to survive. 

Stop organizing this mystery into a pecking order, self aggrandizing our place.

Just be grateful and humble and love the world as it unfolds each day.

A Life's Purchase

 

70 years of life for a hundred thousand dollars

Light falling over the tin roof

A flowering lilac bush

Crocus among the first pea shoots

Pots of soil covered in green leaves

New born babies

Parents besotted by tiny limbs

Butterflies in the wind

Skin warm and soft

Fragrant like mint tea

Lemon slice and ginger root

Daughter running towards the goal

Son smiling on his wedding day

Vanilla sponge cake carried from the oven

Short clicks of humming birds

Warm eyes of a friend

Pouring coffee into a cup

On the table for you

When you feel you have failed

To win a lottery somewhere

In comparison to that poet laureate

Everyone talks about 

All or nothing

Fame or Anonymity 

Applause or silence

And nothing exists between

The sum of your wisdom

Your tears and laughter

Your whole unique life

Buried under thin certificates

That cannot define your achievements

And all the wars you won 

Unnoticed.

The Far Horizon

"It is one of the most counter-intuitive acts in the history of leadership. Moses did not speak about today or tomorrow. He spoke about the distant future and the duty of parents to educate their children. He even hinted – as Jewish tradition understood – that we should encourage our children to ask questions, so that the handing on of the Jewish heritage would be not a matter of rote learning but of active dialogue between parents and children." Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. 

This is quite different from the Sunday School experience of some faiths. One woman recalls asking a question from the Sunday School teacher who then replied that she was not to question the words of the Bible but to obey.

How did that work out for the people? Through the centuries those who expressed an opinion that was not in keeping with the teachings were either scorned, banned from the congregation or put to death in public. 

Unfortunately this is still happening in some places. 

In Iran Nasrin Sotoudeh has been jailed for defending the right of women to choose whether or not they wear hijab. Amnesty International supports the rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression, including the right of Muslim women to decide whether to wear the hijab or other forms of Islamic dress. 

Throughout the centuries incredible stories were used to explain the unprovable. The Witch hunts burned women at the stake using incredible "logic". If a woman was suspected she could be tied up and plunged into water - if she drowned that proved her innocence, if she survived it was "proof" of her guilt, then she would be put to death. 

In Europe anti-semitism was promoted using the blood libel which claimed Jews kidnapped children to drink their blood at a special ceremony. 

If a child was born with unusual limbs, the child and her mother would be banned from the village because it was the mark of the devil and their presence would bring bad luck. 

Not so long ago a white woman could randomly accuse a black man of rape and without a trial, a posse could hang him from a tree. 

Earlier in the twentieth century a young boy from the Sto:lo nation was seen walking near a house where a dead man had been found. A posse was rounded up to hunt him down and string him up from a tree before the police officer could put him on trial.

In the 20th century a Canadian University, used studies that blamed domineering mothers for homosexuality in men.

In politics equality was blamed for breaking up families and welfare was blamed for a weak economy because workers could not be threatened by starvation. 

Children were taught never to touch their own genitals because it would cause blindness. 

Refugees today are blamed for inner city crime. The Evil Eye was  blamed for bad things happening to good people. Giving birth out of wedlock was blamed for the shame of an entire family.

Teaching children how to question beliefs, stories and theories, enables them to grow up healthy and well in societies that value curiosity. Teaching all of us to think beyond the popular beliefs and values of any given age not only protects innocent people - it keeps our world from being traumatized by acts of violence towards a hastily chosen scapegoat.  

White Supremacy is a Mental Illness

When men and women support movements of hate, such as white supremacy, is that because they are desperately trying to shake off the feeling they are redundant in a culture that values the GDP more than human survival?  Or is it a desire to find a really deep hole in which to place all their rage and disappointment?

What is it about being white that makes us special? What has the white “race” achieved?

Colonialism, brainwashing that enabled invaders to destroy the aboriginal culture and call it discovery? Enslavement of African people and the ideology of race based on skin colour? A violent hierarchy that demanded absolute obedience to the pecking order? Capitalism that placed a higher value on possessions than life itself?

These things were not invented by white people - we inherited these practices along with science, law, medicine and education. Over the centuries we have refined the worship of power. We constructed class, race and gender. We promoted and normalized a virtue called the work ethic. But this could only work by cooperating with others, by creating a cohesive narrative to "explain" why the world is the way it is and how we have "conquered" it.

The problem is that capitalism reinvented then trashed and denigrated community, for the drive to get to the top, as quickly as possible. Whoever possessed the top position had the right to demean, judge and dismiss our human need for dignity. The conscientious leader is replaced with the trickster.

Cities are blown up, water is poisoned with chemicals, the air is polluted, trees cut down, territories dug up.

In this environment we are all marginalized refugees. This is a state of ideology. Nature, water, land, air and men only exist in terms of the economy and the only measure that your isolated ego can win are the little contests along the way.

White supremacy like misogyny, anti-semitism, Islamophobia - are symptoms of a mental illness brought about by centuries of abuse that has emotionally and spiritually starved our species of our human needs:- food, shelter, belonging, dignity and respect. When people are denied these things, when children and adults are routinely humiliated through neglect and the commons has been purchased by international corporations, the power of the isolated ego can only be felt through revenge.

We can acknowledge our feelings and use that awareness to restructure engagement in community that values life, good health, clean air and water, kindness and honest communication. The only true power we have is to help others be happy - not by violence but by the voice of integrity. We are vulnerable and fragile. We are not lizards and guns.

As soon as we fall back into ideologies of race, gender and class, we create monsters who must be fed by our neuroses and endless human sacrifice.