Praying to the Divine Lady

Here's a secret trick for praying: pray to Our Mother in Heaven. No, not the BVM that Catholics may recall from childhood, the real God just anthropomorphized as a woman, a caring mother.

Most of us know a caring mother. We know a mother who gave us life in a co-creative experience. We know a mother who laid down the law and spanked us or sent us to our room, a corner, or whatever. We know of a mother who accepted and forgave everything, without for a second forgetting. We know of a mother who was ready to give her life for ours, one who indeed did give her life, by devoting much of hers to us. 

This is much better than the usual experience with fathers. Many fathers leave, uncaring for anyone but themselves. Many others are distracted by their workplace, their own ambitions, their wants. Fathers can teach, can love in a more tough-love way. Fathers can seem all-powerful. But they can't God-like no matter how they try.

God the Father is a human image. God does not have a penis. Yes, God the Mother does not have a vagina, either. God could be an It. More likely than not, God's being is so unique it is closer to an It than a Him or a Her. 

God might as well be dog spelled backward, for all we know. God might bound over and lick us when we come home.

For now, I'll stick with anthropomorphizing, A human-like God is more accessible. It's only an image, a persona, if you will. No one has seen God (for the Bible-minded, see Exodus 33:20-23, 1 Corinthians 1:21, John 1:18, 1 John 4:12).

So, why not imagine Her as the beautiful Mother in the sky, among the twinkling stars!

Reminder About My Book

Here's the original "press release"

 https://letmountainshear.blogspot.com/

Saying Goodbye

Nothing tells you how utterly unimportant you are more than leaving a job or a social medium. Suddenly, you realize that when you die there will be nothing remotely like the JFK cortege to Arlington for you.

When I retired as an editor and publisher of a specialized publication three years ago, I wrote a farewell letter from the publisher. I was selling to an employee.

Number of calls, letter, and emails I got after 33 years? 0, zip, nada. I might as well have never existed in that admittedly obscure little world.

At least, less than a week before cancelling (being hounded out and gaslighted by a well-known social media outlet) I have received two emails. Also, quality beats quantity, no?

Still, the world has not come to a halt without me at the helm of my former publication or me at the SMO.

Sigh!

All Hail the Matriarchist Revolution!

The world is going to hell in a hand basket and no leader is presently going to provide the social order that allows everyone to survive happily. Time to try Matriarchism.

Anarchism, capitalism, communism, neoliberalism, patriarchalism, socialism, traditionalism, and any the other of the isms known to us, have all failed. We are less than a generation from climactic disaster, worldwide authoritarian rule and endless conflict.

What is Matriarchism, you ask? Fair question.

The Wikipedia tells us that "matriarchy is a social system in which females hold the primary power positions in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property." It's also called gynecocracy. 

That's not what I am proposing, which would be a mere inversion of the current patriarchy.

Matriarchism, and a revolution to empower it, means setting up a maternal form of social order in which the primary goal of those who govern and possess moral authority is to nurture and ensure the happy survival of all, in a peaceful and benevolent way.

The Matriarchist Revolution will not be achieved by beheadings, tortures, imprisonment, or social "cancelling" of purported "enemies of the people." A Matriarchist regards all people as if they were her children, favoring none, helping and loving all.

Most women are presently best prepared for leadership in such a society, by virtue of their preparation for or experience of motherhood; however, so are some men.

Yes, some mothers can be harmful. Also, Margaret Thatcher (and a few others like her) is not who I would want in charge; she was merely a patriarch without a penis.

But ideally, what is motherhood among mammals supposed to be about?

Think about the mothers you have admired. They were people who made sure their children were fed, clothed and otherwise nurtured, learned to distinguish right from wrong, benevolently enforced such values, always with the aim of seeing the child profoundly and permanently happy.

Angela Merkel, without knowing it, is an example of a Matriarchist leader. She has striven mightily to push for the best of all her citizenry, without easy shortcuts. Is she perfect? Of course not.

But what if we replaced all the world's leaders with Angela Merkels? Wouldn't our nations be cooperating to bring about a green economy globally? Wouldn't the poorest of the poor be looked after? Wouldn't there be benign leaders everywhere who attempt to persuade and direct society toward universal love?

I'm certain Angela Merkel, if she ever reads my puny blog, will be horrified to be placed on such a pedestal. That's precisely why she is there!

My Facebook friend Christina Kelly unknowingly voiced a Matriarchist belief when she said: "I would prefer [matriarchy] if all men and women had access to sufficient education, and training to fully self-govern, with no need for either male, or female dominance."

Think about it!

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS VS THE WAR MACHINE

I'm beginning to see criticism of Biden from the Left, of which I am a moderate member. Did anyone think that Biden was anything but a standard issue liberal Democrat? Remember LBJ and Vietnam? (But also LBJ's Medicare, AFDC, Job Corps, etc.?)

From a policy standpoint, liberal Democrats have always faced a puzzling paradox since World War II concerning the military. Think of the economic effects of military spending:

1) The military yields higher employment for otherwise unqualified lower-middle class and poor citizens and a generally very nice, wholly subsidized, suburban lifestyle for military families. (Admittedly, with drawbacks such as injury and death. Although US casualties have usually been kept comparably low. No wars since 1941 have involved civilian deaths in the mainland USA. In WW2, the USSR had 11 million military deaths, Germany 4 million ; the USA 407,000, less than half a million. With civilian deaths, in Europe and Asia, some 70 million were killed. The much vaunted 55,000 US dead in Vietnam pale next to the 700,000 military Vietnamese dead and the million or so civilians killed in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.)

2) The Pentagon also subsidizes a nice chunk of the civilian economy. Boeing workers, for example, are highly paid and unionized, as are most major military contractors. After WW2, Boeing declined to the point it shrank to having a clothing store, in Seattle I think, as its main facility in the late 1940s. The Korean War saved Boeing.

3) Then there are the communities in which bases are located, which, once again, reap untold indirect economic subsidies.

4) The military is the only social welfare program that can be sold as pro-business and "patriotic."

So the question is: with what do we replace the war machine?

The Real Independence Day

Cecilieaux is off for the holiday, but he left behind his now-traditional Independence Day blog post. Happy 2nd!

Today, July 2nd, rather than July 4th, is the actual day that independence of the territories that were to become the United States from Britain was first approved. This came in the form of a resolution that attorney Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, proposed to the Second Continental Congress.

The brief document read:

    Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
    That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.
    That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.

The motion was approved by 12 of the 13 colonies. Indeed, John Adams, of Massachusetts, who seconded Lee's proposal, was so certain that a great step had been taken that he wrote to his wife Abigail:

    The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

Now, 241 years later, the festival is held on the 4th, when the delegates approved the wordier, some would say grander, announcement of the decision by Thomas Jefferson, who composed it in the absence of Lee, who had rushed back to Virginia due to his wife's illness.

In honor of someone born on this great day, however, let us fire off an imaginary firecracker.

The Regeneration of 2020

We, humanity, were adrift.

Men abused women. Caucasians oppressed Blacks and nearly everyone else. The rich and powerful had forgotten noblesse oblige, corrupting corporations to deceitfully seduce all others to greed and envy, reducing governments to institutions that, at best, are mostly adrift.

All of us were, the best of our personal abilities, despoiling our planet and sole native home.

Then came a pandemic and we got a chance to survey the world from our little caves. That’s when the need for regeneration became obvious to me. In biology, regeneration is a process of renewal, restoration, and growth that allows everything from cells and organisms to entire ecosystems to overcome natural fluctuations, or episodic disturbance or damage.

As a man, I recognize in pornography and erotic literature our savage pollinating fantasies of women as the source of sexual satisfaction available for the taking, penetrating, and controlling, at our whim. When I hear of domestic murder, gang rapes, sex trafficking, I realize that a #MeToo movement cannot stop this. Feminist research can’t rectify this.

We men need to be healed.

We need an outward regeneration, from the cells in our spinal cord and from the deepest recesses of our psyches. We need to cleanse society of all messages, supports, tradition, socialization, imagery and propaganda inducements to ravage and conquer women that have developed over thousands of years.

The same applies to Caucasians, the rich and powerful and their institutions, and indeed to all of humanity.

Even the oppressed and less fortunate have to change. Women have often enough enslaved themselves to fantasies of beauty sustained by malevolent industries. Non-Caucasians have absorbed notions of a tribal hierarchy of ethnicity, nationalities, and races.

No one is free of blemish.

After the pandemic, if we survive, we need to start a process of regenerating humanity.

My Transitional Year

The first full year of transition into retirement.

The first few mornings I came to my computer at the early rush hour and looked out my window to the busy thoroughfare on which I live. There were the lines of cars and buses, with passengers in suits and office apparel. I laughed.

“Suckers!”

I had first gone to work as an adult, with the end of a working life nowhere in sight — nay, unthinkable! — in 1975. I just added it up: forty-two years, longer than my older son has been alive.

My working life finished Dec. 29, 2017, with no working days left, so January to January is a fair measure of being retired rather than on a weekend.

I first came to retirement with a project and a schedule in mind: a blog I would turn into a book — check that as done — and a plan to walk the 8 blocks to a nearby library with my laptop in a new backpack. There I would edit my work and do some net surfing thanks to taxpayers like me, who delight in paying taxes so long as they go to schools and libraries and such.

Oh, I was also going to go room by room, one a month, chucking all the useless stuff I never had the time to sift from the treasures, then reorganizing the latter in an orderly way.

Those were the best laid plans of mice and men ...

I did complete the blogbook and published it as an ebook in November. You can read about it here Discover How a Faith Became Christianity — Even if You Skipped Sunday School and learn where to get it. (Hint: Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, other places.)

My walking to the library fell off somewhat.

Instead I gained a volunteer gig at a place called Samaritan Ministry, where I now help folks write their resumes and apply for jobs online.

My cleanup of my home stopped at my study in the third month, having done what could be done to the bedroom and bathroom.

Last Times

(A year ago, I wrote the following to myself.)

In the past year or so, I have had the rare and bittersweet pleasure of observing myself do or experience a variety of things for the last time. It has been a season of last things that ended today as I left my final employment, my office and the company I owned for the last time ever.

How often do you get to observe this? When was the last time you changed your child's diaper, hugged a deceased parent, made love to your last lover? Most often we don’t realize it’s the last time.

When last December ended, however, I suddenly realized that it was only a matter of months before I retired. That January and February, with that bitter wind on the walk to the bust stop five blocks away, was happening to me for the last time.

March I filed my last corporate tax return. I’d surrendered to my successor a number of editorial and production tasks and decision making. This year I would slowly surrender corporate operations. I have been a business owner since 1997. By year’s end, no more.

May I had my last board meeting in that season. July I took my last short vacation. When you are the boss, you’re always in. In November, I extended banking privileges to my successor, along with running the payroll.

Then came the inevitable last month.

Dec. 14 I put to bed the last issue of my weekly publication that I would have a hand producing. It would be the last issue before the Christmas break. It was my 1,525th issue.

“Putting to bed” is a journalism expression meaning to complete all editorial and layout work on a newspaper or magazine so that it is ready to go to press; it comes from an old printing phrase to lock up the type form of a publication in the press’ bed, before printing. My publication hasn’t been printed since 2006, but I was still putting it to bed on this day two weeks ago.

On Dec. 15th, I last saw my favorite luncheon checker, with whom I played the game of trying to find out what happened on the year matching the amount due; for example, if the lunch cost $14.92, the year was 1492, the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Dec. 19, I last saw my favorite street person outside the luncheon place I go pick up something to eat at my desk. We exchanged the daily refrain. His was “What’s the word? Thunderbird!” For that he got my ritual $5 “tip.”

On Dec. 22, I finished writing the last story I would ever write for my publication, no longer under my byline (just as the first one didn’t have my byline, both for institutional reasons).