On Gun Control and Civil Liberties

We all know the arguments on both sides. Civil Liberties vs. stemming the tide of gun violence. But this push-pull does not really touch a deeper issue. Why are young men, in particular, so angry at society that they would take the lives of others with them? Why is it that these young men have little or no concern
for the outcome of their actions?
What we need to ask ourselves is how are boys growing into men? Rosie O'Donnell and Tom Selleck had a famous conversation in 2008 on this very topic, when Tom was trying to plug his movie "Love Letters" and it did not go well. Rosie was angry about his connections with the NRA and his stance for civil liberties. She kept at him "You are a spokesperson for the NRA!" And he said, "No I am not." "But you are doing commercials for them!" she shot back. But if you listen to the tape, what Mr. Selleck was asking to discuss were this very question of why do young depressed men want to take others out with them today.
Mr. Selleck: "Suicide is tragic. Fifty years ago if someone got depressed they would kill themselves and it was tragic. But today, no one seems to be asking why are they going into a theatre and taking 26 people with them? Not much has changed here, guns were available then as they are now. But something has changed in the society."
The thing is, he is right. What has changed here? Guns are still available as they were then, but what has changed is examples of others taking others with them to get their point across. The other thing are media has quadrupled. Fifty years ago we had telephones for connecting with other people. And sometimes party lines where several families, in the country, were connected with the same telephone line connecting to their neighbors. Today, everyone has a cell phone, social media has become available and kids use it to bully other kids in some situations. Certainly they connect with their friends too. But when a child is harassed it is not a few classmates on the playground that are humiliating, it is the whole world on the internet that can embarrass. More than one child has committed suicide because of what was out there posted by their "friends." Now while this is tragic, why are boys more likely to kill classmates and other school children, or take out a theatre of people wanting to see a movie as in Aurora, Colorado.
The question remains, what is initiating our young men? Joseph Campbell said in his book on myth and culture from the series with Bill Moyers; "Nature initiates women while society initiates men." We have a culture today that initiates men through movie heroes like John Wayne, Tom Selleck, and others who are usually toting guns. Shoot-outs are usually the way John Wayne demonstrated his manhood. Movie producers have continued on this theme on-infinitum.
Now I am a huge fan of Tom Selleck. I have watched Magnum P.I. when it was on the air and the re-runs on Netflix. I love his humor and his style on the show. Of course his skimpy outfits are delightful too. And yes, there are guns on the show. It is a detective show after all. But what has changed since the 80s are the violence of video games and war games that take up much of the time of many, mostly, young men. I do not have statistics on this, but I feel it is also because many men are not available to be fathers to their kids. This is a huge problem. Most single parents raising their kids are mothers and most mothers cannot help their male children in areas of becoming a man. That is the father's job! Boys must identify with the father and break ties with the mother at some point to become men.
Now while there are single Dads too, there are far many more women as single parents than men, this I know to be a fact, in the 80% range. What is disturbing to me, is that so many young men are left, either by super busy fathers who have little time for them, or by over-worked mothers who are having trouble making ends meet and raising a family. Many women are left with the burden of raising their sons alone.
Part of the problem stems from our cultural demand for more and more in the material realm. We cannot sustain our economy like this, nor can we sustain a culture without initiation. It is literally killing us.
We cannot sustain a society that protects civil liberties over the lives of young children murdered by a young man who did so  in their classroom. My personal feeling is that there should be gun safety, background checks for every gun, buy back programs, and whatever we can do to stem the tide of gun violence. I am even for banning handguns. Riffles are okay for hunting, but why do we need weapons that are designed to hunt down each other? We now have a standing army. We do not need weapons to protect ourselves. Fear does not protect us, it only brings us what we don't want.
The challenge remains, that what is initiating our youth into more violence is the display of violence in the news, in video games, in every nook and cranny of our culture. We are an uninitiated society, or maybe what initiates our young boys into men is violence. This can change. It doesn't have to be this way. But first we have to examine how we initiate our young men into war. These issues are so intertwined. War, violence, cultural impotence to change the way we do things.
My suggestion is to initiate our men through nature. There are programs out there, great examples. Take the program in Mt.Shasta, California run by a man named Tim Corcoran of  Headwaters Outdoor School. He has been initiating young men in a healthy way into manhood for 30 years. He knows that when nature is the initiator there is less of a likelihood of violence and more of one with regard to life. Yes, his boys meet danger, they sit and observe bears, they make huts for them to sleep in, and they watch deer. But what they do mostly is get challenged to make a code of ethics, and live by that code once they leave Headwaters.
Native American cultures have done this for centuries. They have initiated children, boys and men through ceremonies that bring them back into the culture not through violence but through surrender, wisdom, respect and union with something greater than themselves. I know, I have danced in those very dances, not as a man, because I am a woman, but alongside my brothers. I have seen them transform. I have transformed as a result of these ceremonies.
However, perhaps for most kids in cities, just getting them into the wild is enough. Then, let mother nature do the work. Teach them survival skills, and the right use of the wild, and kids will be reconnected to what they have lost.
What they have lost and are trying to find is nothing less than their soul. This is something only a spiritual journey can offer for them. They will not find it in video games. In an increasing secular society, we are not helping our youth connect with their souls. It really doesn't have to be religious. But it can be spiritual. It doesn't have to be christian, jewish, or muslim either.
Take a walk in wild nature, and help your son find himself. This is one way that I know works without violence. Don't take a gun either. Take a knife, a sleeping bag, and some food. Have them build the fire or create a shelter. Take them fishing. Yes there is violence in nature. But there is much more peace than violence. And it is the peace that children today lack in our busy, self-important, city driven culture. Perhaps we can change violence as a form of initiation and instead offer boys a chance to connect to something greater than themselves: that is a culture that needs them to step into manhood safely and with self-compassion and love. Nature can help, and fathers can help a lot too. Make it your father's day gift to your children!
Happy Fathers Day!

The Cowardice of Senators

When 90% of the American people want sensible gun legislation, and the mostly republican senators filibuster abusing the process of legislative process, like adolescent children holding their breath until they are blue, I say they are cowards. Now I am not into name calling, but in this case, when they hear real stories of people whose lives are shattered forever with the death of their children from gun violence, I am appalled that these senators can show their face in public and expect somehow to be re-elected? They will not be re-elected, if the American people have anything to say about it. This American has something to say about it.
Here is my common sense gun control proposal for them to chew on:
1) Ban all hand guns. Period.
2) Ban all assault-style weapons including repeating rounds of ammunition.
3) Ban all clips for any gun with more than 5 bullets for public use.
4) Have a 'clean out the guns day,' including buy-back programs in every major city on the same day.
5) Melt those guns into sculptures commemorating the dead, especially the children in inner cities. Donate the metal to art programs for children to make into art, inlcuding to art schools for their sculpture programs.
6) Institute background checks for every gun registered, and sold in the U.S. period, this includes Internet sales.
7) All hunting riffles must be registered every year, and permits issued for them every year. Period.
8) Publicize every senator or congressman's name in every newspaper, news blog and on television who refuses to vote for such legislation.
9) Tar and feather the senators who vote against such legislation
10) Have those senators publicly apologize to the families of the victims who they voted against such legislation.
11) Make it a felony for a public official to spread lies and fear about pending legislation.

It is time we took back our country from lobbyists such as the ones that seem to have these cowards in their clutches. It is time they got a heart, and moved from fear of the gun lobby to love of our children. I know what it is like to live with a broken heart from loss of a child. My daughter died of natural causes. I cannot imagine what those families must be going through. It is time we acted together as a community for the good of all children. It is time we stopped these cowards from running our country. Are you angry yet? I am.

Really Looking at Our Choices a Question of Integrity

It seems to me that this election is bringing up some basic differences between the two men that are competing for the presidency. You could say there are many similarities. President Obama, and Governor Romney are both men who believe in God, they both are family orientated men who love their families. Both are well educated in the finest schools. They are both men who seem to care about this country. They are both men.

But beyond that, their character and what they represent are quite different. Mr. Romney seems to think that whatever he has to say to get elected is what he will say, while President Obama has set an agenda, one that is the beginning of change towards steady progress of more jobs, an improved economy, more access to health care for more people, and women’s right to choose. He trusts women to make the right choices for their families and their own health care and their bodies. He is working towards a sustainable economy with the Earth in mind. President Obama has what has been forgotten in politics for a long time, it is called integrity. Mr. Romney has demonstrated none what so every changing to please the broadest audience he can reach for a glorified popularity contest. He is not a serious presidential candidate.

Barack Obama has the best interest of all the people at heart. He is turning our country towards sustainability, which we must do in order to stop the free ride that we have taken on the back of the Earth. While Mitt Romney only really cares about what he can take and make money from with regards to nature he is the one trashing the future of children who will not know the wild, not know this earth beyond a resources for exploitation.  He will only increase exploitation to get the economy moving. But he is an exploiter and doesn’t take into consideration the long term effects of what his policies might render. He takes credit for things that he has little or nothing to do with as in the last presidential debate where he took credit for things in Massachusetts .  

Now there are some things that I feel president Obama has done that I do not agree with, like fracking, drones and other issues. However, he has done what he said he would do, he has saved our economy from policies that ruined us, that the republicans set in place under 8 awful years of George W. Bush. Obama has actually reduced the deficit, even though the stimulus was necessary and deficit increased for a time, he reduced it as soon as he could. Some say too soon.

Yet after three presidential debates, Mr. Romney has not offered one solution beyond what the republicans have done before, which got us into this economic mess in the first place. What he has offered is nothing that supports the people. Trickle down does not work. We have seen this folly before only making the rich richer and the middle class paying for their mistakes. He says he will create jobs but has he really done this? It seems from his record that he has cut jobs, fired people and made money from failing companies.  And what about sustainability? What about the environment? He has offered nothing towards sustainability. He wants to open up public lands, lands that are preserved for future generations.
Romney has not given a straight answer since he started campaigning. In fact I would compare him to the story of Dorian Gray, a tall handsome entrepreneur who was a lying cheating man with no integrity whatsoever.  There is a painting of he and his wife in the Art Institute of Chicago. How can anyone vote for him? I am shocked at his apparent popularity.

I am also shocked that no one has checked the electronic voting machines that are so easily manipulated in Ohio and other parts of the country. Who is checking these? These are another folly of the Republicans under George Bush.

It is my opinion that much of the rhetoric against President Obama is due to racism. He won’t say this but I will. The Republican “conspiracies” that they have floated with no factual back-up about Obama’s past, the birthers who remain obsessed about his birth certificate, those who think he has secret ties to the Taliban, etc., are not looking at him beyond the skin color.  What they see is an African American that has questionable ancestry. This is the most insidious kind of racism there is. If anyone cares to look beyond appearances, they will see the truth of these two men and what they actually offer the American people.  Two men, one African American with integrity, and who has a will to assist the people and who HAS demonstrated this to all Americans, and white man who has known nothing but privilege, who cannot know one iota of what most people need. Mitt Romney is a man who wants to undo women’s rights to choose and a health care plan (based on his own plan in Massachusetts) that he wants to now undermine just because the democrats proposed it. He really only wants to claim glory for himself and redo the legislation to say he “saved” the American economy by destroying health care. He will increase the deficit if he increases unneeded military spending by trillions that he intends with nonsensical ways of not paying for the increase in spending.

Please America, wake up to really look at these two men beyond skin color. Look carefully at their hearts. If you look at their hearts, you will see that Obama has been true in helping Americans with a selflessness that is steady and true to the needs of the people The other, Mitt Romney, just helps himself to what he wants, and lies his way with questionable tactics in the process to get elected.

It is time we as a people woke up and really looked at these two candidates for the good of all especially the Earth.

America please wake up.

Two weeks ago, four brave souls walked the mountain tops of the south San Francisco Bay creating holes in the fear-base that coverse the surface of the Earth. This 'polking holes' will help to make the Earth more a more safe and loving place, eventually. And with great intention and love, they did it! They began to help the fear-base unravel! Yippee!
What is the fear-base?
Fear-base is what we have been manufacturing with our human-made fears over the last several thousand years. We have been creating wars and situations that warrents survival fears
like taking power from one group over another, or changing a boundary that has been
previously established, or fighting another clan. Our hatred of others is our own self-hating.
The Earth has had it! Enough she is about to say, time to give up this way of life, not on my
back any more!
So, we humans have a choice, we can continue to create more fear and pack it down like a rubber mat on her surface, or we can open to and acknowledge our birthright. That is our loving inheritance. We are surrounded by unconditional love, if we could only percieve it all around us.
Just think of the constant giving that the Earth and Sky do everyday for us. They feed, house, cloth and inspire us. What more could we ask?
It is time to stop our oldways, and then to begin to love ourselves. What are the traits we hate about others? Can we begin to first tolerate, then to care, and then to perhaps like, and maybe love ourselves? What we hate in someone else, we hate in ourselves. So stop and make a new choice. A choice for love. The Earth is waiting for us to open to the vast, loving universe.

How we can Listen to the Earth

Listening to the Earth is not something most people think of doing. However there are many people around the world who do. Who are these people? They are those who have not lost their Earth-based ways, such as Indigeonous people, and those who are seeking a revived spirit of connection with her. They walk out in the morning sun, wach it come up, pray to the life force that lives all things, they offer their love, a song, a small offering such as a flower, corn, rice or tobacco.

How did we get so far from this simple practice? We have to look at Western History and how there has been a co-opting of Earth-based, and love-based ceremonies by various power-based relgious organizations. These religions were mostly interested in power over the masses. There has been a lot written about this by various authors such as Maria Gambutis, Matt Fox, Joseph Campbell, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (Jesus and the lost Goddess) Hyman Maccoby, and many others. What they show is that a gentler, more loving and grateful relationship with the Earth and all her mysteries once existed. That fear was installed (800 years of persecution of Women in power such as the witch burnings documented by the Vatican) and that the love of the Earth was replaced by fear, terror and power-over.
Power-with, and love based is where we are going. If fact recently on 11/11 there will be a group of women meeting in Peru to re-establish love as the primary focus of our Earth. We can all join in and shift our attention to love as a key to unlocking our long ignored relationship to her.
It is that simple. It is that important, as we can enjoy a new birth if we do.

Walking For the Earth

Last weekend 10 souls walked around Mt. Diablo in Northern California over 5 days. Walkers carried prayer bundles they had made for the world, the earth, families and ancestors, and for ourselves up the mountain. The walk was created and initiated by Daniel Foor (www.AncestralMedicine.org). Ginny Anderson was co-leader, and I had the privledge of pouring lodges front and back of the event, and cooking!
It was so fun to be a part of it. The first day, after a lodge at the base of the Mountain, the hikers were dropped off at the foot of the Mountain and hiked 5 miles up to Juniper Camp the first day. The second day, began a series of 7 mile loops each day for 3 days. The last day 3 loops were done closer to the top as well as a hike up from Juniper Camp to the summit before dawn in 30 degree tempuratures as well as high winds. In the last hours of the retreat, there were three small loops at the very top in the observatory. This culminated nine loops around the mountain. The days on the mountain also included 5 days of ceremonies offered for healing our relationship to the Mother Earth and our relationship of humans to humans. One prayer bundle was to honor those who lost their lives on the mountain, including the Native people who lived there before the rest of us, and for those who had died by their own hand or at the hand of others. We also prayed for the teens who are hurting and killing themselves. This was especially important due to the fact of the recent gang rape of the young girl in Richmond the same weekend.
This is only the beginning of what is necessary for the next few years to help us into 2012 and beyond. It is the way we need to be relating to the spirits of the Earth for the good of all.
I keep thinking of how we can make more of a difference on this planet. One way is to pray, another is to do walks such as these, as well as ceremony for the Earth and LISTEN to what she is saying to us through journeys and intentional work such as this prayer walk.
We need to create new ceremonies, and use the old ones to help us strengthen our relationships with all relatives, including with the plants and the animals on this planet.
This ceremony was a completion of a dream I have had for over 20 years. The question I have been living is: How do we create ceremonies so we a) intiate our youth, b) support the Earth relatives with new communion c) help the Earth through her transition in the next several years.
I have gotten the answer through a workshop I was given by my spiritual guides called Opening the Stargate, (see my website: http://www.thecenterforthesoul.com/). The answer has also come through my work and collaboration with Daniel Foor and his Earth Medicine Workshops and groups.
It has been a dream, not to do this alone, as for years I have written books, and made my way with what I could do in Native American Ceremonies. Now with the groups Daniel is running. I am excited to be creating Earthbased Rituals with other shaman's who know how, and also who have the intention of loving this Earth, even when the culture at large is not yet tuned into the Earth as mother, as sacred, as our heart, as our own selves.
It is time we begin to wake up and pay attention. Would you like to join us? I hope so, it will help us all.

Balance with the Earth

When you think of health, think of balance. Balancing our health means reducing stress, eating right, being active enough to stay in shape, and enjoying our lives while we live them, taking time to be with family and friends.
In the same way we need to balance our relationship with the Earth. How do we do this? We pay attention to that relationship. We stay in contact with the Earth and listen to what is needed. Our bodies are the Earth, so if we are putting junk into our bodies we get unhealthy from it. If we are putting trash on the Earth, dumping toxic waste, then we are polluting the Earth. What goes in to ourselves and on to the Earth are the same body. It is the same Earthbody.
Excuse me if I sound elementary, but so many people have not made this connection. That the Earth and our bodies are one body. On a spiritual level, we are connected with the Earth as well as the Sky. Spirit lives everything not just what is above us. When we connect with the Earth we connect more deeply with ourselves.
Often I think about the plastic waste island circling out in the Pacific Ocean. How that island is clogging up our ocean. If we think of the elements, earth, air, fire and water as aspects of our own being, literal parts of our body and essential to the functioning of our selves, then the waters of the Earth are our own waters. Emotions in dreams and in psychology represent emotions. So what does it mean to have this plastic island out there?
For me this island of plastic represents our inauthentic emotional response to the Earth. We are not really feeling what is going on. There is some sort of plastic, canned response system that is not working here in response to our Mother Ocean, to our grief. In african spiritual traditions, the oceans are the mother ocean, mammy water, Yemanja. She takes our grief and takes the dead and does not return them. So if floating out there in the middle is a big island of plastic, just think of this for a moment. What part of ourselves is frozen, plastic in our response to the decimation of the Oceans, of the Earth and the world? It is just a thought.