Wild spirit

"Wild spirit," 5 x 5 acrylic on canvas

We hear a lot these days of people who are "spiritual" but not "religious."

Given the turmoil and politicalization with many organized religions, it's no wonder, and the more I read and study of different cultures, a question comes to mind.

What is spiritual? Depends on you you are, your culture, your beliefs and much more.

I can't help think again of Native American cultures and the way they, and others, hold certain parts of creation as sacred. 

Thus, today's little acrylic, another sacred icon. I believe it is also important, in these over-regulated and political correct times,  that such a creation is also a symbol, a beckoning,  of wildness, of freedom. This is my second of the subject. There will be more.

Soon available at In Your Eye Studio & Gallery in Paseo Arts District.

Simplicity, on Christ -Mass

"Simplicity -- Christ-Mass," today's 5 x 7 #watercolor card

He made it simple. It was about love, in action. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated.
He was tired of convoluted religion that burdened people with regulations and judgment, excluding them and ignoring their humanity and needs, making their God more distant.
"Religion" simply means "re-tying," bringing back together, but it had become anything but simple.
He made it simple:
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." (John 13:24)
No wonder the "religious" authorities in charge of complicated "religion" hated him. Instead of rules, he simply preached love in action:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
"Blessed are the merciful, for the will be shown mercy.
"Blessed are the poor in heart, for they will see God.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
"Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Don't you think that his love for simplicity started at his birth, which the world celebrates today...simple people, simple surroundings, reflecting a God who is very simple, "God is love."
Amazingly simple, isn't it, but yet much of the "religious" world still doesn't get it.
Consider those who want to erect the Ten Commandments on public property, ignoring his words about love, but worshipping rules and exclusion.
Consider the hate, and mercilessness, and absence of meekness, desert of righteousness, warmakers,  who "lead" our and other countries while claiming to be "religious."
Let this day remind us how much we need simplicity, in the steps of the one who was born, lived and taught simple truths about us and God.
"When Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd." -Matt.  9:36
Not rules. Just love. Simple. Like his birth.

Christmas day - simplicity

Simplicity incarnate, 4 by 6 watercolor

There wasn't any thing fancy about him. He was a simple man.
No wonder his simple teachings echoed with so many people, tired and burdened from organized religion's ornate rules and judgements and liturgies.
Born ordinary. Raised simply. Worked with his hands. Taught with thoughts and words forged by simple people living uncomplicated lives.
The power and passion of straightforward common sense for common people. Love. Forgive. Be  kind. Be humble. Be thankful. Be generous. Don't judge. Care.  Remember me.
Simple words from simplicity incarnate--remember him this over-hyped, over-organized, over-hectic day?

24 days till Christmas--before Christmas

Long before Christmas, Taos Pueblo, 5 by 7 watercolor

As December begins
on our calendar,
These people were
before Christianity did
Taos Pueblo, before
Western religion arrived
Still an icon of "civilization"
Longest inhabited place
in our "Christian" country
Taos Pueblo
Must be painted
but not understood
Only revered
As a beacon
of spirituality
Not religion
older than
Christmas

When I'm in a concentration camp

Painted two years ago, and owned by step-son-in-law Jake Harms.

You won't be able to visit me, or it will imperil your safety.
You won't be able to say my name, or even mail me.
You will have to disavow you knew me.
You will have to affirm, under oath, that you knew all along, I was a traitor.
You will have to join the majority, goose step and salute with cheers to the dictator. 
You will have to "vote" unanimously to disband schools, to destroy libraries, to repeal the Bill of Rights, to censor all art and music.
It will begin in one of the smallest states, and spread, like cancer, an infection of the mind, of the soul, of humanity, by selfish forces of delusion and division, of intolerance and insecurity, and funded by the hunger for power, not for people.
I will understand, because I will be one of the first to be rounded up and sent behind barbed wire for "national security."
I will admit that I used you, deceived you, led you astray against your wishes.
I will deny that you ever agreed with me, and affirm that you were afraid to disagree with me. 
I will die doing slave labor to build a wall in 100 degree heat in a desert compound where there is a cup of water, and a piece of bread every day.
Or I will be executed for failing to bow down, or salute and repeat the mindless sayings of the "leader," or for trying to escape into the deadly heat of the desert.
I hate pain, and that is my great weakness, but I would rather be shot in the back running away than suffer.
But just know, that my memories of you will sustain me with joy; that I will not judge you for staying away, that I will pray for your survival--knowing that this too shall pass--because souls are eternal--that despots and demagogues are not. 
But I will weep for the loss, for America, and freedoms, and decency, and morality--stolen and fueled  because of a "leader's" manipulation of fear, and hatred, and racism, and violence, and intolerance,  and demagoguery, and ignorance, and extremist religion and politics.
They will come for you next. 

I wish this were a fantasy. 

Real...religion, and ...

Are you real?
As I've told you, our "soul detox" group Sunday night, people trying to de-toxify their lives from much of the false religious "Thou Shalts" and "Thou Shalt nots " of modern day divided  Christianity, is studying Fr. Richard Rohr's "Falling Upward--a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life."
Sunday we were discussing a chapter on necessary suffering, and this passage hit home to me, including Jesus' words in Matt. 16:25--"Anyone who wants to save his life must lose it."
Rohr: "...there is a necessary suffering that cannot be avoided, which Jesus calls "losing our very life, or losing what I and others call the "false self." Your false self is your role, title and personal image that is largely a creation of your own mind and attachments."
"It will and must die in exact correlation to how much you want the Real."

This reminded me of even more potent "Scripture," though I had the wrong reference, until a friend found it for me:

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit. 

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.' 

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?' 

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.” 
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Stifling Summer Sickness--III (Warning)--

(Warning, continued: Coffee with Clark is not a political column and rarely deals with politics because there is so much bs and whining out there that it's useless to add any more. Nobody is listening, nor cares. No opinions are going to be changed. I avoid politics as a subject except on those times when it crosses into my expertise, media--which is unfortunately often these days. Still, I generally hold my tongue, unless something really raises my ire. And then I've found the best way to deal with that is through parody or sarcasm or humor. I am a journalist and can't help it, because my entire experience and training makes me almost instantly skeptical, to where I challenge everything, whether in religion, culture, advertising, media, or politics--what politicians say, government officials --at any level--tell you. 
I have a built in BS-Detector, I want facts, and can easily spot bs, pr, and the biases and opinions that such like try to bilk the public with, regardless of political viewpoint.  I shudder when I see so many propaganda techniques uses in politics, by "public servants" deluding the public with trigger words and labels. I am particularly upset that so many people buy into those unthinking delusions. The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are so overused and misused that they are meaningless. 

The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are so overused 

and misused that they are meaningless.

The same goes for people and media who cannot separate opinion from fact as at Fox or MSNBC and much more cable cacophony. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times are "conservative" and "liberal" on their editorial pages, but deliver solid, factual news and information. Not to be able to tell the difference is ignorance. To label media "liberal" is an unthinking reaction to propaganda, especially since most media are owned by big corporations dedicated to the bottom line, and thus "conservative." If American media in general has any one overriding fault it is of being boring and irrelevant--which at least Fox is not. At the same time, many of the same blind believe  all journalism and journalists are opinionated, that they try to slant all the news, and that journalism is dying. Those people really have no perspective of history and role of journalism in this republic, or the scope and diversity of media in our society. Would someone, instead of blindly spouting what they've unthinkingly accepted,  just please ask, "Which 'media' are you talking about?"

Like an infection, they've needed time

to fester before coming to a head.

Next, Coffee with Clark also rarely discusses religion, for many of the same reasons already mentioned. The older I get, the more I've come to realize the importance of spirituality over religion. I believe Jesus came, not to set up a religion, but because religion wasn't working for the average person, and he wanted people to have a relationship with God, no matter what they called the Spirit. I also know that spirituality is much bigger than this western workaholic, Calvinistic, either-or, capitalistic society we live in. 
One size does not fit all. I am particularly proud of my four children, who, raised in a good fundamentalist household, each have their own diverse religious and spiritual beliefs. None of them believe like me, and I am pleased, though we share much. If that's true at home, it's true around the world. God--Spirit--is too big for any one specific kind of narrow-minded church house, or any one country, people, or set of beliefs. If not--God-Spirit--cannot be truely God as creator of the universe. Spirituality around the world takes many forms and involves the entire creation. I'm influenced in this by what I've learned by Native American beliefs and more. But what really sets me off is how little of the Beatitudes I see in American "Christianity," and much of the same religious hypocrisy Jesus preached against and tried to do away with.)
So, after chewing on this for two weeks, and reading Job in the context of what is a relatively minor, if stifling, illness, be aware that politics and religion, will come up, as I write. Like an infection, these thoughts needed time to fester before coming to a head. And as with most drug warnings, the warning may be longer than the dosage instructions, and this one has been rewritten and edited numerous times.)
(Side effects: If this is a "rant," it is just part of the warning for the dosage of the next posts on this blog, as I recount this stifling summer of sickness. 
If you don't like it, or think I'm crazy, or lost in sin, or whatever, just blame it on all my meds.  You're probably right. Especially since the most powerful medication I took has been a large dose of mortality. Read again the first part of this warning.)

The most powerful medication... has been a large dose of mortality.

The most important book, other than...

I've just finished reading perhaps the most important book in my life, other than...the Bible.
That's quite a claim, not one I take lightly, especially to have been influenced by "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman, and "The Man Nobody Knows," by Bruce Barton (1925), about the manly  Jesus. And of course there are others, including Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," but that is more the favorite than most important.
I'll admit, my reaction is influenced by three weeks of unexpected illness and mortality, but I started reading it before then, thanks to the "soul-detox" group I'm privileged to be a part of Sunday nights.  The increased emotional and physical stress has perhaps intensified my reaction, but this is a book I've needed. I wish I'd found it 15 years ago. But it "means" more now.
Here's an except from late in the small book (I've got underlines and marks and stars on almost all 167 pages of text):

"The bottom line of the Gospel is that most of us have to hit some kind of bottom before we even start the real spiritual journey. Up to that point, it is mostly religion. At the bottom, there is little time or interest in being totally practical, efficient, or revenue sharing. You just want to breathe fresh air. The true Gospel is always fresh air and spacious breathing room."

Oh, the book? Written by a Franciscan priest in Albuquerque, Fr. Richard Rohr. 
"Falling Upward, A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life." 
Read it. You don't have to be "Christian" to gain from it. If you are "Christian," it will challenge you, provoke you, make you uncomfortable, awaken you, perhaps anger you. You will be stronger spiritually. 

Some of my marked up pages

Shutdown

"Captain, they're trying to shut down the reactor."
"I know that, Clark, and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it, is there?"
"But we're out here light years from home, asteroids everywhere, and without power...."
He let the the thought go unsaid....sure they'd have enough oxygen for a week on the mile-long ship, but without power to keep the shields up and maneuver, it would be only a matter of time before a piece of rock hit and killed them all.
"I'd break out the spacesuits," the Captain said. "It'll give us a few more days, and by then, if they're dead, we might be able to get back there and restart the drive." He and Clark were the only survivors of the original crew of 24 on the interstellar Sojourner.  It left a year  year ago to take 249 remaining  members of a radical religious group to a new home where   they would no longer threaten the finally peaceful, unified Earth  trying to start Armageddon.
But they'd overpowered their keepers in the rear of the ship where they were quarantined. While they couldn't get to the control cabins, they'd managed to break into the reactor areas.
All the Captain and Clark could do was helplessly watch on the control monitors as they tried to sabotage the drive systems.
"Can't they set off an explosion?" Clark asked. He was a navigator, not a nukie.
"No, but they might make a mistake and release enough radiation to kill themselves," the Captain said. "That would be their own Armageddon."
"And ours," Clark thought, because then there would be no way to get back there and restart the drives, without dying of radiation.
"And for us, death by radiation or lack of oxygen, some choice," he mumbled.
"It's amazing to me that with all the planning that went into this relocation, nobody thought about the effects of a shutdown," the Captain said.
"Relocation" was such a nice word, Clark thought, thinking back to his ancient history lessons about the Earth's treatment of colonized people, like the Palestinians, the Jews, the American Indians, the slave ships. But they'd never had the chance to shut down a government. If they'd only known how easy it was to disrupt the majority.
Then he remembered, there was one instance where a radical minority back in the 21st Century caused the collapse of an entire civilization, just by forcing a shutdown of the government. At first it had just been some kind of revolt against a law, mixed in with religious fervor.
 It amazed him how the followers of religious leaders who preached love and goodwill, peace and compassion could be so hateful and violent throughout history. And of course they hadn't seen or thought about the consequences, once their government quit functioning ... uncontrolled sickness and plague, financial collapse mixed with invasions from enemies taking advantage of the paralysis. All of them ended up in labor camps and died of starvation or disease, prisoners in the land they helped destroy, with no government to protect them.
"Like us," Clark thought. "Prisoners in our own land, and about to die of starvation or sickness.
"All just because of a  shutdown."
The lights flickered and the monitors went blank. The two-hour emergency lights came on. He and the captain  reached for the spacesuits.
He heard something hit the hull of the ship, and the lights went out.

Sacred and secular...flags of readers

You can get in a fight in America, and sometimes arrested, for dishonoring the country's flag. Misuse or disrespect of the flag is a political issue. A sure way to anger Americans, protesters in other countries know, is to burn it. To those who have served in the military, it is almost sacred.

But there is at least one flag of regular readers of this blog that is religiously sacred--that of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Adopted in 1973 with white inscription and sword on the background of green for Islam, the flag carries the Islamic creed, the "shahada." In Arabic, it's pronounced "lā ʾilāha ʾillā l-Lāh, Muḥammadun rasūlu l-Lāh."
"There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God."

The sword stands for the house of Saud, the founding dynasty of the country. The kingdom was founded by Abdul-Aziz bin Saud in 1932, though conquests began in 1902.
Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and is sometimes know as the "land of the Two Holy Mosques," in reference to Mecca and Medina, the two holiest places in Islam.
Saudis take their flag religiously. It is never lowered to half staff as a sign of mourning, or hung vertically, because that would be blasphemous. In another instance, in the Olympics, an attempt to put the flag on soccer balls was reversed after protests, for the same reasons.
Another flag of frequent readers of this blog has a longer, but more secular,  history, that of the Republic of Colombia, Adopted in 1861 after winning independence from Spain in 1823, the flag is unique in that its stripes are not of equal width, and German philosopher Johann Goethe inspired it, telling the designer:

"Your destiny is to create in your land a place where the primary colors are not distorted,"
The colors represent the gold of the country, the seas on its shores and the the blood of heroes who gained the country's freedom.
Colombia has been a land of turmoil and long rebellions, and most recently drug cartel violence, but violence and danger are decreasing and tourism and the economy  increasing. After Mexico, it has the largest population of any Spanish-speaking country. It is one of few countries  to have shores on two oceans, the Pacific and Atlantic.

Important to me and this blog, in addition to its readers, is its huge coffee crop, which was once second largest in the world. Now, thanks to climate change which has decreased production, it ranks third behind Vietnam and Brazil.
Oh, and by the way, as Saudi Arabia gets its name from a person and family, Colombia does too, in a way, named for Christopher Columbus.