onehouse

Loving Day.

“This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings so love, love, love.”
- Hafiz

Today is Loving Day. It's easy to forget that only some 40 years ago it was illegal to have a mixed marriage in 16 of the states in the United States. Barak Obama's parents would have had an illegal marriage if they had moved to certain places.

Yesterday Canada's Prime Minister issued a national apology for the wide spread abuses visited upon First Nations families and children through the co-operative "church and state" operation of residential schools. The testimonies of these now grown children is painful to watch. Some of my nephews and nieces have First Nations heritage and I can't help but see their faces if they were to be taken from their parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, and visited with hell on earth in the name of God and "solving the Indian problem."

It sickens me. And it is why I dismiss institutions, websites and (mostly) men who demand that I respect their authority because they have "the calling of God" and the right interpretation of their holy scriptures. It's a dangerous combination - the demand for authority, societal power and your blind belief in your right interpretation.

I hear some church folk sniffing haughtily at the Catholic and mainstream churches who have this a part of their current and ongoing history. But I also have family members and friends that were caught up in abuses in denominational schools for missionary children. These same denominations have done the same old "shoot, shovel, and shut up" treatment to their own wretched history. Confess your sins to one another my ass. Not if it costs reputation and of course cash. 

And these same leaders, pooh-pooh "love your neighbor" as being soft and overly tolerant to the outside forces they they think are more diseased than they themselves are. There is always have some kind of caution to following the way of love, compassion and kindness. Our wings must be clipped. We must be caged lest a heart filled with love sends us to parts unknown. We must be tethered or every day might become a loving day.

Picture Blogging: Day 16: Bullshit meter.

Today's picture via grrrlmeetsworld.

More evidence of why, with each passing day, I move farther and farther away from institutional religion of many kinds and their associated yapping heads.

Picture Blogging: Day 11: Naked Lunch

Paula's House of Toast always has great images but this entry made me want to stand up and applaud and shout "Hooray!" Many of us feel alone in our daily resistance to all parts of lives becoming monetized but there are a lot of Paulas and Houses of all kinds doing their thing out there so that human beings remain truly human.

Thanks...

to all of you for keeping an eye on Onehouse and sending me some nice notes and associated death wishes for my infection. You are nice folks and I thank you for keeping the death wishes limited to the bacteria and no other parts of me. I've been thinking how grateful I am to be in a place where these things can be handled. I posted this over at the Beyond blog but it is worth re-posting here:

Number of Inhabitants per Doctor

Joni Mitchell: Shine

Hana

Hana steps out of a storm
Into a stranger’s warm but
Hard-up kitchen
She sees what must be done
So she takes off her coat
Rolls up her sleeves
And starts pitchin’ in

Hana has a special knack
For getting people back on the right track
Cause she knows
They all matter

So she doesn’t argue or flatter
She doesn’t fight the slights
She takes it on the chin
Like a champ

Hana says when life’s a drag
Don’t cave in
Don’t put up a white flag
Raise up A white banner
In this manner-

Straighten your back
Dig in your heals
And get a good grip on your grief

Hana says
“Don’t get me wrong
This is no simple Sunday song
Where God or Jesus comes along
And they save ya”

You’ve got to be braver than that
You tackle the beast alone
With all its tenacious teeth
Light the lamp

Rinse. Repeat. (Defending God)

I was looking something up on old posts and thinking that this quote on defending God is still required reading. Good thoughts for Sunday morning.

The world we have now.

From Birds Through a Ceiling of Alabaster which I found in a second-hand bookstore. Written over 1000 years ago by Arab (Abbasid) poet Abu Al-Ala Al--Ma'Aari

God help us, we have sold our souls, all that was best,
To an enterprise in the hands of the Receiver.
We've no dividends, or rights, for the price we paid.
Yet should our wills choose between this corrupt business
And a paradise to come, rest assured they'd want

The world we have now.

Expendable.

Well, I can't find too many "spiritual" (purposely in quotes) "leaders" (ditto) calling for justice on this issue. I've noticed many religious blogs talk of positioning or loss of positioning and then supposedly correct theology that doesn't remember the mention of widows and orphans which, if I recall, has a lot to do with true religion.  So I might as well listen to Joss Whedon.  He stepped up and said something:

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong.  Physically.  Spiritually.  Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

Put your weapons down.

The Narrow Path

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"Non-violence is not passive. It is an entire way of life."
John Dear, SJ

Blech.

While making a quick trip to Technorati, I was astonished to see a pastor that I used to know listed as one of the top hits of the day. As I followed the story, I was absolutely amazed to see how easily a whole bunch of people are distracted. It is all so very very sad and makes me feel kind of sick to my stomach.  You couldn't get those kind of hits over religious people discussing widows and orphans. Darfur. New Orleans. Vancouver. Baghdad. It just doesn't happen. Those discussions fade into oblivion. Not nearly as important as bruised egos and cheesy videos. All this writing and energy into something so stupid. If this is what is important now I am so glad to have walked away. Pathetic seems like a good word to use when describing attention-seeking and contrived* things like this. So does bullshit. May God forgive our tiny hearts and minds.