On Hoops Within Hoops Within Hoops Within Hoops

There has been a discourse in a discussion group of which I frequent, in these past few weeks, of the personal spiritual journey experienced by those who have shared with the group and posted their stories and thoughts. And what a journey each has experienced, and expressed, and shared.

And the lurkers too have spiritual journeys.

For some, their spiritual journey has been staid, uneventful, predictable. Yet for others, a warp and weave of the Dinseyland-linear-herding-throng-control, the seemingly endless back and forth oscillation, the going forth and coming hither, only to reach an end point that may be somewhere between comforting and annoyingly close to the point at which they started.

And I too have a spiritual journey. And I have shared glimpses of it in other posts. But today, there are parts of my spiritual journey that I recognize as being somewhat congruent with the beauty and singularity of another’s spiritual journey. A journey expressed in the spirit-filled words of Black Elk . . . A Native American shaman.

And as I see layers and layers of concentric circles in my spiritual journey, Black Elk speaks so eloquently of that metaphor in his.

For he speaks in terms of a circle. Specifically, his word is “hoop.”

He never observed this earth from a geo-stationary satellite . . . he never witnessed this earth from any one of NASA’s earth-orbit shuttle vehicles, but his perspective was as visionary as if he were there himself.

I don’t know when he wrote this . . . I have no idea of his frame of reference. But no-matter, for what he says is without reference. It is transcending. And like a hoop, it has no point of reference.

The beauty of a hoop as a metaphor for The Spirit, for the spirit, for his people, for us, for our physical home, for our place in the reaches of the circular heavens . . . it is one awesome metaphor.

And the Native Americans and aboriginal peoples everywhere had no concept of the complexities and intricacies of the circles that actually formed their lives . . . but alas, only the predicable circles they were so intimately acquainted with. The circle of day and night. The circle of lunar regularity. The circle of the sleep of the winter, the awakening in the spring, the blush of the summer, the blessedness of the harvest, the sleep of the winter again. The circle of bright moving elements in the night sky. The circle of the conception of a life, the birth of an infant, the growth of a child, the maturity of man and woman, the death of an honored elder.

They had no need to know of other circles in their lives. They didn’t need to know that what they observed as the cycle of the seasons of the year was in fact a circuitous route around a minuscule star in a far-off corner of galaxy resembling a puddle of spilled milk. They had no need to know they were swirling in humongous circles, revolving like the swirling tea-cups in the ubiquitous tea-cup carnival ride. No need to fathom that the spilled milk itself was swirling as a miniscule part of a bigger swirl, and swirls within swirls within swirls within swirls . . . for as far as the Hubble telescope can possibly see. Black Elk didn’t need to know that. And if he did, it would have filled his soul with affirmation of the even greater magnitude of The Spirit.

Black Elk had no inclination to prick his finger . . . gaze into a speck of blood. See the electron micrograph profiles of carbons, nitrogens, oxygens, irons, phosphates, zincs, and 60 other components that are swirling in hoops. Nor did he study the swirling interactions of the electron clusters swirling around these minions of metal ions and biological molecules that are teaming in that speck of blood. He only knew that blood was sacred. That a Spirit was indwelling within that blood. It was a force to be honored. To be respected. To be trusted. He knew that blood within his world of life was meant to sustain other life. And when he killed an animal . . . it was a sacred gift of the Spirit, and that animal’s life was to be honored and respected in a Most Holy of ways.

Black Elk stood on a mountain:



Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round beneath me was the whole hoop of the world.



No, he couldn’t see his world as a blue oasis in a pitch-black abyss. He couldn’t see thousands of miles of swirling clouds. He couldn’t see entire oceans at one glance. It is likely he had never seen an ocean at any time. For what he saw was a horizon that curved. He recognized his visible world was an arc in a hoop. That he was a part of a circular whole.



And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw.



He was not astro-physicist. He was not micro-biologist. He was not an agronomist. He was not economist. He was not sociologist. He was not a theologian. But he was gifted with the essence of The Spirit. And he knew what he saw. For he knew from whence his spiritual journey had come . . . to where it was to go.



For I was seeing in the sacred manner the shape of all things of the spirit and the shapes as they must live together like one being.



His spiritual journey was a journey of hoops. Of circles. Of spheres of things beyond the mortal.



And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that make one circle, wide as daylight and starlight . . .



And he was humbled. He saw his place. He say the place of his people. He knew of the ways of His Spirit.



And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.

And I saw that it was holy.

Black Elk.



[The words of Black Elk are the responsive reading No. 614 in the Unitarian-Universalist hymnal, “Singing the Living Tradition.”]

Our worship service this past week, was in respect and “re-creation” of the Spirit-Essence of the natural world. Of the only text book of the Spirit that we all can read . . . for it is an equal testament to any and all that wish to read her story.

And what a story of salvation it reveals.

So far different from what so many people are engrained with today. So far different from the limiting literalization of the great and honored sacred myths from antiquity that exemplify the principles of spirituality. So far from the codified creeds of a barbaric pre-enlightened geo-centered theology. So far removed from the rigidity of a singular snow-bound musher’s trail.

Yes, what a story of salvation it reveals.

That we are part of a cycle. A grand cycle. Of hoops and swirls. And for as far back as one can look and for as far ahead as one can project . . . we are a part of one awesome grand cycle of hoops and circles.

For as deep within a living molecule as one can hope to peer, for as far as the strained eye of Hubble can see, we are made up of, and participate in one awesome grand cycle of hoops and circles.

As the miniscule, orderly, arrangement of nucleotides gives a three-dimensional structure of DNA swirling within the aqueous medium of a living organelle, as that three-dimensional structure is the essence of information, of knowledge itself . . . we are a part of that story of salvation.

As the biological molecules making up neurons and synapses of the brain are as physically hard-coded in biochemical structures and as real as the Rock of Gibraltar, they are nothing but three-dimensional purely physical structures.

And like software in your computer is also nothing, for it is nothing, but a metaphysical way of ordering the scintilla of magnetic elements of physical memory in a patterned way that imparts “life” and functionality, the soul is the software of human existence.

And what a story of salvation that is.

For a humanly indefinable Essence of Spirit is in control of both the biochemistry of life and the soul that gives it the spirit and animation.

And what a story of salvation that is.

And Black Elk would understand that. And he would see the workings of The Great Spirit in that. And he would honor and respect that. And like his fore-fathers for millennia before, he would provide sustaining stewardship for that.

And he is abhorrent of a mindset that rapes and pillages this earth for all it is worth.

And he has lost his story of salvation when that happens.

And we have lost our story of salvation when that happens.

And I find myself on spiritual journey of circles.

And my circle returns me to things primal. To a story told by the creation.

To a story that can be read without the necessity of relying on the “testimony” of others.

To a story that is not based on the spectral evidence of a deathly kind like that experienced by harmless women in a city of peace in the old Colony of Massachusetts.

We each have our spiritual journeys.

The journey is ours. Personal. We can plot and map and implement parts of our route. We can select our tour books, guide books, road-side attraction pamphlets. But we each inevitably must find our detours, and scenic side trips, our forced changes in plans, our delays. But no matter what, it is still our journey.

I pray that we don’t become mush dogs on the Iditarod trail. And for certain, not to become just anyone of the following dogs. For our spiritual journey can be so much more fulfilling than that.

For unless you are the lead dog, the view on that journey as all the same.

But there is yet another formation for mush dogs. And it doesn’t involve the linearity and rigidity of single path.

For each dog is independently tethered to the sled. And collectively, they fan out into an arc.

And the musher must have inordinate more skill to control this consist.

And The Spirit becomes even more infinitely awesome with the freedom yet gentle control of these free-spirited dogs.

And each dog gets his or her own view.

And each person experiences the beauty of their own spiritual journey.

And Black Elk then sees another hoop.

And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father . . . And I saw that it was holy.

The Refectory Manager

The Lord of the Ring

The fog of this worldly mess cleared for me this morning, I suspect but only for a moment, but it did clear for me, sometime early this morning. Things came into a perspective. And for me, it made some momentary sense. For I now see a rational explanation for what I see around me.

For like many, I have been numbed and overwhelmed with the horrors that I see on the internet web sites (those that do show these horrors, images of which that are never revealed to the American masses by the MSM (main stream media) for fear of loosing their support for an illegal war), and read of the nefarious mischief of political ideologies of which I abhor. And no, you won’t find this on Faux News or the other so-called MSMs. For the Faux News bunch are paid shills of these nefarious ideologues.

I vividly recall my visceral reaction when the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) crowned George II as King of These United States in that fateful year of 2000. If there every was a Y2K disaster, in retrospect, that was it. But at the time, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief, that, at last, the adults were back in charge. The seasoned adults that is. The experienced adults, the Rumsfelds, the Cheney’s, the Powells, and of course, Daddy-George, and the countless ideologues as holdovers from the Reagan and Bush I eras.

But it was not until the Swiftboating in the fall of 2004 that I started to wake up to the realization that something was insidiously wrong.

The religious penetration into Republican politics has always bothered me . . . from the Falwell days of the Moral Majority . . . of which it was neither. . . To the unconscionable intrusion into Teri Shiavo’s very existence. The mullahs Roberston, Dobson, Kennedy, Sears, Scarborough . . . To the whipping up of hate to protect against some imagined threat to some patriarchal legal construct of property sequestration and women suppression called “traditional marriage.” To the sanctioning of the expected dumping of hundreds of thousands of frozen souls into the stream of medical waste and yet the denying of hope to my family members destined for Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s. To their “Incestuous Protection Act” which prohibits a remedy to a child raped by her father. To guaranteeing that every child will be left behind. To further the spread of clean air that wreaks havoc with the asthmatic. To tolerate more poisoning of our water systems. And to countless other falsely named initiatives that do their intended exact opposite of what the masses think they will do.

But now I know how these things have come about.

When I realize that every agency of the federal government that is involved with science has been infiltrated with political appointees that defy science . . . muzzle the scientific spokespeople for these agencies . . . deny the inevitable with respect to science . . . I begin to see a pattern.

When I heard of the secret meetings the VP chaired back in 2001, the secret meetings with the oil company executives, I tried to ignore what my gut was telling me. For I simply thought that the adults were finally in charge. That the adults knew what was best. And yet I didn’t like it when I heard the oil companies themselves were writing the energy policy legislation.

It wasn’t until 2004 that I heard the term “neocon.” And now it scares the hell out of me.

I read the book “What is the matter with Kansas?” I read everything I can get my hands on. I search the web. I find things that frighten me. For I see a horrible future for my grandchildren.

Since 2004, I finally came to grips with my own sexuality. I came out of the closet. I have become profoundly aware of the perilous legal position of a homosexual person in American society.

My personal center of gravity has made a tsunami shift from hard-core “conservative” rhetoric to liberated progressive action. For as deep in the closet that I was, I could simply ignore the perils of gayness . . . for in denial - - it simply didn’t apply to me.

I remember the lunch-hour walks around the lake next to our office building, talking with my co-worker. Discussing how it would be a favor to not re-elect GWB because presidents always seemed to get into terrible trouble in their second terms. We were speaking in jaundiced jest . . . little did we know the prophetic ability that we had.

Little did we know that our very constitution would be overthrown in such a sinister way. From within. From the enemy within. By the enemy within. By the hysterical notion that to protect our very lives and freedoms, we must turn over our lives and freedoms to a nefarious ideological cancer. And how that has simply been a ruse to destroy our Constitution.

For 9/11 has nothing to do with this. Israel and Lebanon have little to do with this. These are simply skirmishes to distract from the underlying destruction that is taking place. 9/11 is simply the excuse for why the constitution must be overthrown. The mechanisms were planned, put in place, and operational long before 9/11.

There has been, for decades now, a movement to establish the United States as a world dominion power. Some have called them “The Domionists.” It is an eclectic mix of capitalistic greed coupled with the adoption of the great commission of Gen 1:28 – “dominion over all” and the malicious falsifying and making of revisionist history that this country was founded as a Christian nation with a mandate to implement their version of God’s will on this planet. The SDA’s interpretation of this end-time millennium experience is nonsense to them, but the millennial interpretation advocated by most evangelicals as a period of time where Christ Himself reigns from a restored New Jerusalem feeds perfectly into this. And it is sickening to see the Power Point presentations in the mega churches, displaying repetitious lyrics of un-singable songs, with background pictures of a hill, with crosses on a hill, with fighter jets screaming overhead. And their deadly bastardization of everything the humble Carpenter of Nazareth ever promulgated . . . their deceitful turning, one more uncountable time, into murderous holy war.

And to see on ABC news this past week, services in evangelical churches egging on Israel to destroy everything in their sight, to usher in, to “force” the return of Jesus as King of Kings. And what of the Jews in Jerusalem . . . kill them or convert them. God will sort them out.

But that too is only a sideshow. It is the sideshow that guarantees the votes for the main theme.

For the neocons who would control this temporal world do not have near enough votes to sustain their power structure. For they are few in number. Immensely powerful and wealthy, but few in number. And they have hijacked the “conservatism” of Goldwater and the 60’s. And a conservative of that era does not even recognize the “conservatism,” or “corporatism” of today.

But this group needs votes. It needs voters. And they have found their dupes in evangelical Christianity. For it is so ridiculously simply to throw out red-herrings to the masses. The so-called social wedge issues. It is so easy to inflame the passions of people who allow others to think for them and to tell them what is “right” or “wrong.” It is so easy to scare the hell out of people by telling them that two women who love each other will destroy their marriage. That two men who love each other will sodomize their adopted child. That two stoned heterosexuals can be married in Las Vegas for a matter of hours, and claim the privileges of 1400+ federal laws and yet the committed partners of decades of duration are denied the decency of hospital visitation. That an embryo conceived in a drunken tryst is sacred but after the child is born it can live in squalor and poverty, and yes, by design, be purposefully left behind. Until that is, until it is unconscious and brain dead . . . and then it is sacred once again. No matter that it is children that are killed in war. Vegetable pickers in a harvest field . . . people trying to buy food in a market . . . people in love trying to console and comfort each other with their tender intimate touch . . . no matter. Nothing sacred about their lives . . . kill them all. God will sort them out.

And so the evangelicals came out in masses. To defeat their hot-button issues. To save humanity from their antediluvian concepts of evil. To smack those malevolent liberals a good one . . . to teach them the lesson of their myopic bigoted instructions to God, directing God as to how He had better control this evil with a good pounding into bleeding heart liberal guts, into their raucous dens of sodoministic iniquity of unholy perversion of stilted flesh, into their pocket books of filthy lucre, into their debased sub-human minds. You bet, the neocons learned how to garner votes. And votes they did.

But the neocons themselves are never affected by their hot-button issues. Their daughters will make it to where their inconvenient abortion can be readily obtained. Their stem cell problems can be treated with the best in private medical care. They will buy their way through the problems of a sequestered “gay” relationship. It simply is not a hot-button issue to them. They might feel jaded having to pay their housekeeper another nickel per hour. They have no need of a social security account. Their doctor will willing just put their sleep medication or Viagra on their account. They will never set foot into the squalor and pollution of an American inner city. Their water is ultra-filtered. And what happens to their feces is of absolutely no concern to them. For they are simply up hill from it all.

But the evangelicals, the social-conservative, passionate evangelicals, will vote these issues, and by rote, will vote in the political sponsors to support these issues . . . and never realize they have just voted to destroy their very economic existence. Their health care, their pension, their public education, their public environmental safety, their supposed American way of life. And their vote just makes them more poor, more vulnerable, hours from being homeless . . . and their vote just made the wealthiest even wealthier. One tremendous transfer of wealth from the masses of poor to the coffers of the filthy rich.

And the neocons drive on. For their goal is a single ring. A single lord of the ring. And that is oil.

No wonder the Bush administration is in full frontal denial of global warming, of absolute fostering of fossil fuels over anything resembling the greening of the environment. For the amount of money spent on Iraq could have nearly solved a solar energy technology initiative.

But for a patch of sand in the Middle East that contains the lord of the ring.

And that patch of sand is Iran.

And the neocons are attempting to stop at nothing to dominate that patch of sand.

And to hell with China, India, Europe . . . let Israel fight it out with Hezbollah . . . they are nothing but surrogates anyway.

Let the religious fanatics worry about the silliness of end times and raptures and millenniums and salvation and whatever demonic things they can conjure up from their antiquities of coded scriptures. This religious stuff is nothing but a duck, cover and conceal side-show to masquerade the real agenda.

And that agenda became frighteningly real when an administration was unethically and fraudulently installed, when a second branch of government of the same ideological persuasion abandoned its constitutional obligation for oversight and became a duplicitous accomplice in the usurpation of the US Constitution. And the agenda of a neocon cabal bloodlessly captured this country.

And that agenda is the domination of the economic world - - the God-given mantra of Genesis 1:28. To self-serve a few of this worlds most powerful and wealthy, to sustain themselves through whatever the demons may bring . . . to control the single lord of the ring – oil.

I wore the uniform of a commissioned officer in the United States Army for 23 years. On numerous occasions I raised my hand, and took the federal oath for commissioned officers . . . I pledged to protect the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

And there is an insidious enemy within this country. And it has already usurped the United States Constitution. For an Executive Branch of the government to usurp the duly enacted laws of the Legislative Branch with signing statements, and for the Legislative Branch to abrogate its responsibility for a constitutional check and balance on the Executive Branch, and for a Judicial Branch to be stacked with willing conspirators to support this agenda and in turn, to abrogate its responsibility as a check and a balance . . . we have lost the inherent protection of the United States Constitution. For it simply is functionally inoperative in this current environment.

And for a powerful religious dogma to take the pacifist teachings of itinerant teacher from a carpenter shop, and to make of themselves as a god no less, to direct the supposed end-times of this world . . . and to be duped even, as willing co-conspirators of a fascist, corporatist, dominionist enemy from within, is frightening.

For this country to survive, in the way that many of us have dreamed that it would survive, will take defeating this enemy from within.

There are two ways.

The first way is in an election.

And 2006 is a water-shed election.

The other way is unthinkable.

The fog of this worldly mess cleared for me this morning, I suspect but for only a moment, but it did clear for me. Things came into a perspective. And for me at least, it made some momentary sense.

And that momentary sense became frightening.

The Refectory Manager