Tag Archives: peace

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Restoring Peaceful Climates

Retribution and restoration
share a concern for justice as balance
of responsibility with authority.
But retribution is coercive
while restoration democratizes therapeutic cooperation,
invites grace and love and mercy
for oneself
as for others.

Retributive justice
pretends a violation of our multicultural Golden Rule
leaves no option but to set our WinWin potential aside
and move toward WinLose and LoseLose retaliation.

This sin of missed opportunities
to restore health between individuals,
between specialized economic and political interests,
between invested cultures,
between Earth’s collaterally operating species
between internal Left and Right hemispheres
as between Earth’s dualistic West
and nondual Eastern metaphysical hemispheres
degenerates into further cooperative-affective dissonance
rather than internal peace,
and further punishing competitions
in reaction to past fears and angers and terrors,
inquisitions and impositions of power from Above,
when regenerative restoration
calls for growing balancing powers from within
whom we indigenously could be
reweaving regenerative justice and peace.

Restoration is an invited exchange of therapeutic powers
where retribution ignores further abuse and neglect
and disempowerment
of both predators and prey.

If our Earth-manifest destiny
is to predatively colonize
until all land and water,
airwaves and energy for light and heat and cold
is privately governed and hoarded
by an overpopulated species
of Might Makes Right
always Trumps Golden Global Rules,
then we are a culture grown to expect retributive judgments
where restorative ego and ecotherapies
are more readily
and cooperatively
Self as originally part of Matriarchal Other
manifesting-mentoring cooperative WinWin destinies,
while that other
predative
colonizing
pirating
privatizing
secularizing
degenerative destiny
is just more oppressively fake bad judgment news.

We could rejoin Earth’s natural sacred grace,
restorative reforesting therapies
composed of Golden Global Peace and Justice,
gift economies of gratitude.

Retribution is a competitive choice
to pursue degenerating ecopolitical relationships
where WinWin restorative therapies
wait in the bicameral wings of consciousness
to promise regenerative peace with justice,
within internal landscapes
as externalized balancing climates,
economies of ecological power balance
through active restorative
redistributive
mutual gifting intent
of sacred gratitude
for Earth’s nurturing
nutritional investment
in natural-spiritual humane life,
cooperatively maturing ecopolities.

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Interpreting Dreams and Political Nightmares

I have always had a fondness for the narrative of dreams.

Why this may be so
I could not speak.

I do recall a former life as a psych major
reading Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.

Recognizing his iconic topography
yet wondering about his training
in phylogeny,
predicting one’s pre-adolescent healthy ego
and ecological restorations
of our species’ cooperatively maturing habitat
throughout our multicultural
matriarchal-dominant rebirthing story.

I hope to feel
this timeless sacred narrative
of Earth’s reweaving Sabbath,
regenerating Eden’s therapeutic dreams
of polyculturing Paradise.

And,
not quite so many patriarchal pathological nightmares
emerging shared paranoid and claustrophobic punishing vocations
so vulnerably naked without potential integrity,
somehow not yet patriarchally here
with matriarchal now,
co-arising.

I LeftBrain dominate with far too retributive
non-redistributive neglect of justice days
manifesting competitive WinLose assumptions,
haunted by LoseLose nightmares
of a merely secular mortality.
I RightBrain dream
in restoratively manifest destinies toward WinWin
ecopolities of cooperative therapeutic praxis.

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Teaching Integrity of Peace

What is our primal purpose
for continuing this troubling relationship?
asked Yang of Yin.

If you are clueless
then you have not been listening
to us
as actively as nondual times would predict,
replied Yin against Yang.

For me,
this purpose is to enjoy Sacred MotherEarth,
but I preferred to hear yours first,
again,
your speaking grace
where silence contemplatively rules,
replied Yang more gently back to Yin.

As we both well know,
for me
each space is time sufficient
for ecological gratitude,
neither mere secular reasons of nature
nor more romantic euphoria of serene spirits
planting as you harvest what we more cooperatively nurture,
defined Yin toward Yang.

We are
this yintegrity of gratitude
for enjoying MotherEarth’s outdoor Golden Ruling places
Golden Ratio Voices
Golden Elixir Schools for learning sacred ecology,
ecopolitics of cooperativity
as geese form immigration journeys
as co-emigrant bilateral functions of democracy
riding winds back and forth above waters
washing streams of cooperative fertile time,
integrity of you and me
as spacetime wu-wei We,
sings Yang while Yin dances
through mutually enjoying gratitude,
singing grace
dancing rhythms
of EarthMother’s fire-circle ecstasy.

What are primal relationships
for continuing this troubling dance?
asked YinWater under YangWinds
revolving Sacred EarthTime
together integrity.

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Irrational Numbers, with Lyrical Pretensions

The number of folks sitting
on the back porch
waiting
for peace to strike,
like waiting for my garden to grow
without yet having planted it.

The number of people
noticing that chronic victims
suffer from critical victimization events,
minus the number who also notice
that chronic crimers
also suffer from critical
criminalization
events.

The number of people
horrified by the number of victims
of prejudicial discriminashunishtion
against their ethnicity,
economic lack of class,
and suitable gender,
and age of maturation
but also unaware
of how we celebrate
positive multicultural discriminations
for diverse ethnicities,
economic cooperative sufficiencies
of fairly decent incomes,
genders, including preferences,
and age-appropriate behaviors.

The number of folks who also see
impoverishment and marginalization,
chronic social criminalization,
whenever they hear it said
of retributive justice,
deterrent incapacitation
and restraint
as additional most negative,
and possibly unnecessary, constraints.

The number of folks we retributively select
willing to settle
for uniform dark punishments
of retributive overkill,
without the slightest hint of redistributive overjoy
most anywhere
for or with anyone,
mistaking this for the unity of restorative purposes
we more peacefully
and co-redemptively
so long for.

The number of excellent scientists and parents
seeking deductively reasoned
learning processes by day
while dreaming inductively co-operatively
seeking warmer compassions through each night.

The number of economists
and politicians too,
of parents
and educators
recognizing communication
through diversely humming channels beyond simply straightforward speaking
and hearing
and watching,
to include RNA’s more regeneratively primal
feeling
and tasting
and absorbing
through rooting systems,
functioning like reverse lickers
and stickers
and salivators
and saps
and pheromone freaks.

The number of scientists
who might somehow come to realize
that tree conversations
could take place through rooting systems
underground,
plus those who also celebrate implications
that tree co-empathic conversations are,
at their highest co-operative best,
currently over our mutually
co-regeneratively
reiterating heads.

The number of folks
who feel complicit
in our punished guilt
plus those who can still celebrate
our nature’s mutually complicit passions,
born both loving predator
and beloved prey,
until parents and Sunday School
and day care teachers teach other not-so-wise.

The number of communication buffs
who think these two populations,
society’s predators and victims
reallllly neeeeed to talk,
and listen,
and not so much both at the same time,
and probably not lick
or hit with a stick
because that would be so icky.

The number of kids
who would predict
that their parents
and teachers
will compete to heat our climates up
so we all can drown together,
regardless of primal
tribal
co-identities.

The number of prophets
recognizing selves
as original native residents
of indigenous EarthTribes,
speaking
and listening
cooperatively for co-planting,
and thereby growing,
ego’s active cooperating peace
as and of and for
eco-restorationelating justice,
Left in rational solidarity with SacredRight,
DNA mutually sniffing RNA’s
optimal Paradisal CoOperating Climates.

The number of folks
still settling for talking and praying
against demonic climate changes,
when we could also be cooperatively planting
and growing
rich climates of health,
cultures of gratitude
at least for and with front porch
EarthFlag-waving
Positive PsychoEcoLogists.

The number of people
who fail to recall
that what ever you were taught as
Orthodoxy’s Sacred Truth,
at one time
was first naturally felt and sensed
as eisegetical WinWin hope,
mutually-licking and sticking
hypo-principaling around theses
with their appositional un- and anti-theses.

The number of systemic processors
actively hoping
for zero-sum
ego-in
eco-out
balancing,
Plus-Plus double-binding
both before
and after notnotnotnot yet
bilaterally timeless linear Time
restoring polypathic RealTime Tipping Points
of ZeroSoul rationality.

The number of Earth’s creatures
waiting for war’s continuing fires to drop
when we could more cooperatively learn
to wait instead for peace’s inside-outside
other secular-sacred nondual loving shoe to drop.

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Waking Up Despair

Waking up to despair,
sadness,
bone-tired at war with a beeping alarm clock,
an alarming list of immediately urgent responsibilities
without an opportunity in sight,
or at least not this first despairing fright,
at end of night.

If this sounds familiar
as at least your normal Monday through Friday,
you probably need a better way toward bed
the night before.

Most likely, earlier.

But also,
even for many with mindfulness practices,
disciplines
with their own short and long-term rewards
for both natural and spiritual health,
remembering gratitude
is our interior face
of grace’s exterior face,
or karma’s exterior influences,
or love’s potential winners winning
full circle in theory,
yet too anemic during this dreaded alarm clock time.

If yours is solely a morning contemplative practice,
after you wave the kids off to school,
after the gym or the run,
after the personal hygiene,
it is already too late
to optimize your opportunity
to wake up with least claustrophobic despair
and most expansive hope
building toward faith
that this day just might be even better
than yesterday,
as utterly remarkable as yesterday appeared
as you were mindfully drifting off to sleep
perhaps even before greeting GrandMother Moon’s
new through full repeat performances.

She’ll be here all week,
visible and sometimes invisible,
guarding your restorative rights and responsibilities
toward regenerating tomorrow’s realistic gratitude
for renewed opportunities
to brush your teeth,
and greet each child and significant other,
to notice if these wake with a smile
toward this day,
or with a scowl
for lack of sleep
or a good dream interrupted,
and recognizing how this is two ways
of saying one important not yet thing
which can build toward despair,
and further lack of more therapeutic dreams.

It is an important personal and also political choice
to prepare for sleep
repairing for tomorrow’s grace
or in dread against our memories of grace’s lack,
apparent absence,
persistently stuck issues
too overwhelming to think or feel our way out of,
through,
beyond.

These are important items for evening contemplation too.
But, when I am making my lists,
I start with minuses,
drift off counting my appositional pluses.
They are both there
within us
if we can choose restorative faith
after our lights turn out.

In this sense
we can choose our karma,
our awareness of positive and negative grace.
Love’s tones of restorative therapy
and retributive punishment,
if not yet quite overwhelming gratitude,
also not awakening to further despair
from chronic days of self with other abuse and neglect.

I continue having a dream
that the night everyone in military-industrialized cultures
drifts off feeling graced with opportunities
to become and do every cooperative thing we can
to guarantee Earth’s future of healthy exterior climates,
that is the night before our first morning
arising together
without overwhelming internal competing despairs.

Faith that this restorative therapeutic day
could unfold no less grand
than this dream we shared
our polypathic
demilitarizing
dis-industrializing
less exhausting night before.

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Columbian UnCivil Allegiances

It was a nasty war.

To call it an UnCivil War
is to avoid an obvious oxymoron
as embarrassing as Military Vitriolic Intelligence
through lack of Anger and Fear Management,
violently over-industrious absence of mutual assured civility.

We were too optimistic
about democracy’s therapeutic capacity
to heal still bleeding racist
and sexist
and anthro-supremacist wounds.

Meanwhile,
First Nation truth-tellers
predicted we newer natives must harvest xenophobic fascism
as we supplanted lock-step European royalists
to merely replant their WinLose colonizing intent
without creolization’s more slow-grown WinWin grace
to begin and end each day with resilient gratitude
for polycultured unity.

To avoid mid-way
one right-way rallies
for ever more uniform allegiance
to a patriotism defining
who is healthy favored inside
and who best remains pathologically inferior outside,
bought and therefore sold through God’s most obvious neglect,
bred and bled at ego monoculturing will
by those more sacredly sustaining
inside this most perfect Union’s
not truly mutually enfranchising multicultural folds.

Donald Trump is U.S. President,
the hopefully last exhaust of UnCivil Wars,
because he is not alone in unresolved conflicts
about economic and political lines
drawn between north and south,
now blue against red,
like diastatic and diastolic competitions,
where cooperative co-delineations are
hands-down
essential to healthy organic circulation,
Tranquility of Preambling Promise.

Blue would restore uniting ecojustice
as both sacred personal
and secular public
ecological vocation.

Overly commodifying utilitarian Reds
would return retributional revenge
against those threatening sacred restorative lines
of matriarchal equal with patriarchal rights
of eco-stewardship

To give up competing against hosts of alien nations
to invest more nutritionally
in cooperating with and as SkyWoman’s Original Native
EarthTribes,
long before Eastern sightings
of Nina,
Pinta,
and SantaMaria.

This larger unresolved Civil War
began renewed with ballistic forces
when Columbus Day colonizers
assumed European superiority.
Yet was,
at best,
midway unfolded as North America’s Great UnCivil War,
then after-shocks of contested cooperative enfranchisements,
advocacy and advertisements for mutually marching markets
toward consummating eisegetical pledges
of new-found allegiance to FatherLand
while laying waste to anciently permacultural nutritions,
kneaded and rewoven through Thanksgiving Resilience
MotherEarth Exegesis.

Together,
we close each warring violent chapter
with renewed opportunities to now,
again,
become of one united natural-spiritual mind;
not mere monoculturally competing allegiances toward uniformity,
but preferring instead
both Blue with Red polyculturing cooperative unity,
civilly NonViolent,
more perfect,
Unities.

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7 Reasons to Not Talk Gun Control

Today we have a list of seven best reasons
not to even think about talking gun control
after an automatic rifle out of control
critical event,
one for each day of the week.

Monday:
The automated guns might hear us,
and continue automatically firing themselves
into more innocent bystanders
despite the lack of any specific humane intent.

Tuesday:
We will not need to hear the full boring list
of restraining illustrations and constraining anecdotes
about how local solutions
continue failing to deliver needed global non-violence resolutions.

Wednesday’s Child:
We will not have to consider the remote possibility
that global non-violence,
rather than automated ballistic “shoot first” associations
and public and private sector incorporations,
is what international political leaders might reasonably also list
as appropriately adopting sane international WinWin relationships.

Thursday’s Continuing MalAdaptive Child:
The remaining non-gun owners
might not hear the insanity of supporting gun silencers
as a conspiracy to make even more money
selling further violence
than trying to more humbly sell peace.

Fried Out Day:
The remaining gun owners,
within this public sector silence,
buy more time to refuel,
resupply,
propogate,
become fertile and multiply automated death
and dismemberment technologies,
in a world that is already suffering from overpopulation anyhow,
despite all those evil abortions,
and growing hurricanes and floods and tsunamis
and polar melts
and air pollution
and water pollution, etc.
Maybe if enough of us start aiming at each other,
we can shoot our way out of this overpopulation problem.
God knows,
we have been trying long enough
through Ballistic Business As Usual.

Saturday’s Sabbath:
Business As Usual is perhaps the best reason not to even talk about military industrializing civilian controls
after an isolated automatic rifle out of civic and civil control
uncritically
unanalyzed event.

Full Sunday:
There is less money to be made from knives,
and poisons,
and fake piety of
God bless you
in face of historic over-investment in violent rifles
to take out your kid;
the one God blessed you with
until death came
from living in a nation-state
where the simplicity of one gun-one bullet,
in case of emergencies,
could never be enough
for Second Amendment Advocates
of their First Amendment Rights
to speak and act violence or non-violence,
without responsibility or accountability
for which is which.

 

 

 

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The SpeechWriter

Not too many decades out of college
I finally landed my first full-time job,
as a White House speech writer.

I know,
you would expect
I would not start at the top
and then claw
and grab
and snatch my way to the less immoral bottom
of a Certified EcoTherapist career ladder,
but apparently the President preferred
to abuse and neglect someone with no more public sector experience
than he had accumulated to this sorry state
of deforesting a nation’s wealth,
and I was clearly the least experienced applicant
who bothered to desperately apply
for a patently thankless job.

I was broke
and I thought perhaps I might wrestle a Presidential Pardon
for my therapeutic student load of toxic debt.

My first assignment
was a ten minute stand up comedy piece
to be delivered to the Press Club
by the least good humored non-politician
I had yet to meet
in ludicrously self-incorporated personage.

To my amazement
he did not stray off teleprompter
more than on
and did acquiesce to my suggestion
he could only be funny,
rather than tragic,
as a cross-dresser
who had simply forgotten to change
before leaving his rompish bedroom,
thereby transposing
his deadly public sector lack
of comedic hopelessness experience.

He chose a pastel blue chiffon maid’s uniform,
a Big and Beautiful Girl’s minidress
with matronly white apron
all gathered at the waist,
or at least doing its best
under stressfilled circumstances.

Where he found the fishnet stockings
with seams intended to aim straight up and down
the back of his hairless white calves,
I should not say.
But his seams tended to wander off to his dominant right,
should there actually be such a lonely place
as a gratefully suppressed left
in the mercifully unseen forest
of his meaty thighs.

While I couldn’t see
his party platform pumps
on EarthTribe network coverage,
I later heard this was not by accident
and I should feel fortunate
to have avoided fascinated allegiance
to their ruby red,
scuffed white,
and sky smoky blueness.

After pandemonium subsided
he began:

Under-dressed ecofeminists
and junk-brained gentlemen
of the fake press,
thanks so much for this utterly predictable
and distressing invitation
to speak over your heads tonight
about the profound merits
of New Reactionary Republican
reproductive resonance
and replete regenesis
of religious right remains right,
although sometimes a bit tight
around my rapidly expanding middle.

Leftist liberal libertines
like to quote that notorious drug addict
Janis Joplin:
Freedom
is just another word
for nothing left to lose.

Reactionary Republicans
have some of our own definitions
for new economic and old political values.

Justice
is another merciless word
for no one left of Jews.

Speaking of which,
isn’t my son-in-law
doing a great job
of being a quality not all that Jewish Republican?
And possibly the only Republican Jew
east of the Mississippi
and north of the still contested Mason-Dixon Line.
Although he is now trying to steal his sister-in-law’s gentile inheritance.

Let’s see.
Oh yes,
Peace
is just another word
for being between wars.

Patriotism
is just another word
for nationalistic loyalty test jargon
where all the supremacist lyrics
rhyme with juicy jism,
like monoculturalism
and racism
and sexism
and currently trendy anti-democratic totalitarianism,
where once resided MotherLand Libertines
cynically quoting Janis Joplin.

Liberty
is just another word
for nothing left worth stealing,
and grabbing,
and snatching,
and rubbing up against,
and preferably eating, eventually.

Virtue
is just another word
for robbing integrity
from future generations because,
as my Elders taught me,
it’s better virtuous us
then plundered them.

And,
last and maybe least,
love
is just another word
for nothing left to hate
and monger fear about
at least until my next election,
another corporate raid on pubic sector treasures.

Thanks so much
and may God bless the sacred FatherLand.

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Beloved Sacred Communities

Prisons fester further desecrating guilt by association
as churches
and synagogues
and temples
and mosques
foster sacred innocence through re-association,
communion of the wanna-be saints
and Bodhisattva suffering warriors
for EarthRights Peace and Justice.

When our faith communities
feel like monoculturing monotheistic prisons
of fundamentalism,
then our non-elite prisons
begin to sound more like gospel protests
against further guilt containment
through hypocritical disassociation
with the great unwashed sinners
and economic cheaters,
and politically competing liars,
and lack of polypathic lovers.

Ecology is about oikos,
home,
habitats of and for progress
noticed in two appositional directions;
progressive enrichment of nature-spirit systems
and regressive decomposition,
loss,
guilt,
failure,
heading toward death unless balance can be restored
to help our systems
become more cooperatively resilient,
from prison through cathedral
through capitols of nation-state investments.

If decomposing guilt
can grow through imprisoned associations
then no ecological surprise
that regenerative innocence of Bodhisattva Saints
can grow through polypathic
polyphonic
polycultural
poli-economically balancing
positive nature-spirit good faith communities.

If we removed more not-funda mentalistic bad faith
from GoodNews communities,
then perhaps we would become clearer
about how we each and all live love between guilt
and innocence,
associated with fellow prisoners
and hardy integrity of mutual trust investors.

Prophets of prison habitats
as our own defensive nation-states
grow in violence
and enslaving racism
and addictive sexism
are tragic comedians,
self-fulfilling and perpetuating
hate and fear futurists
predicting necessary further bad descending climates
of evil ecopolitical faith
and further Business As MightMakesRight Usual
guilt by disassociation from ecological wisdom.

Mentors of good faith communities,
polypathic and polycultural health outcome predictors,
investors,
are, sadly,
about as likely to be found on death row
as in the back row of kneelers and prayer rugs.

Our loss of faith in a resilient nature-spirit future
is also our gain in bad faith resolves
to continue disassociating
from impending climates of violence
and supremacist nationalistic racism
and monoculturing sexism

Imprisoning separations
inviting regenerativity of GoodNews,
sacred ecological reweavings
re-integrations

Suffering and guilt and grief
inviting healing of cooperative ecotherapies
from death row to front pew,
EarthTribe patriotic health
of good faith solidarity.

An anti-ecological denialist notion of systemic ego-identity
derives from over-active disassociations
from our native nature-spirit imprisoning wombs
inviting rebirth
into Left with Right
Ego with EcoConsciousness
of prisons opening revolving doors toward good faith
and fundamentalism’s bad faith closed doors
against EarthTribe PolyPathic Solidarity.

To be present to our own imprisoning pain
is to grow toward communities of habitual polyculturing outcomes,
cooperative economic investment
in political solidarity,
mutual trust among all Sacred EarthTribes,
living in profoundly sacred animated forests
and oceans
and deserts
and full through new moon stardust skies.

Beloved EcoPolitical Communities,
where half sacred cooperatives Yang-full
also see and hear and feel
notnot half degenerating Yin-emptying
flow of nondual co-arising
double-binding WinWin
wu-wei
Tipping Points toward TaoTime.

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Ms. Liska

When I was a FreshPerson in a new higher school,
our English Literature class was delighted
to meet a new to our rural area Ms. Liska,
who was a beautiful teacher
both outside
and in,
and so we all loved her,
and knew she loved us as well,
although sometimes not happy with one or another
due to smart-ass behavior.

One day,
for reasons we could not imagine at the time,
nor would I remember in this rhyme
of metaphysical reasons for living
and dying,
Ms. Liska
asked if any of us had heard of Marcus Aurelius.

Whom I happened to be reading at the time.
So I was, as I recall,
surprised to see only my hand up
because I had probably just volunteered
to display my FreshPerson ignorance.

She did in fact go there
and ask just whom I thought Aurelius was,
which seemed to me
to be
a Roman Emperor
who was also a published Stoic philosopher.

And so it seemed to Ms. Liska as well
so why not dig the Stoic grinding ax some deeper?
And what is Stoicism?

Now definitions
are not my strength,
I’m more of a delineating guy.
So I thought a Roman Stoic
might be like a British Churchill,
keeping a stiff upper lip
having looked at all our deadly facts
and blundering on anyway
with this mysterious life of stoicism.

Of course Ms. Liska
would not allow stoicism to rear its obstinate head
within its own stubborn definition
so she kindly invited me to try again,
not because I was wrong,
she quickly added,
but because I could become even more right.

Marcus Aurelius reminds us
if life is indeed a bed of roses
then we should expect some deadly thorns
along life’s thunderous way.

He invites us to embrace our birthday
by remembering
this celebration is paid back
with an ultimate death day,
as what grows up must also fade down
and back.
It’s a package deal.
Accepting this package as gift
in its life and death polarities
is a stoic thing to do,
and a delusional thing
not to do,
a Greek act of hubris;
not very Roman patriotic,
not stoically realistic.

Ms. Liska found this better
than my stoic thorns
along life’s bed of dying roses way.
But,
then we skipped along to something else
and I never did have my time
to ask her what she thought
about similarities and differences
between who has authority to induce life
and whom might, then,
find responsibility for deducting my life,
any life,
humanely compassionate
or more stoically otherwise,
like a hungry Roman Emperor
or voracious bear.

For it seemed to me
quite transparently true
that in accepting my right to live
and do the best I could
to stoically tolerate
everybody else’s own acceptance of their right to live
and do the stoic best we can
with life’s inevitable ups and downs,
then we must agree with our inherited justice system,
and to live within a just war view of stoic death
is also an unjustified view of my authority to live responsibly.

I was no more authoritative
and remain no less responsible
for causing my own stoic life to begin
than to end my own life,
much less anyone else’s,
or to delegate authority
to some tired State
to do this for me.

I think Marcus Aurelius
was more stoically comfortable
with society’s right
to invite
each person who has taken a life
to become responsible enough
to consider choosing their own death
within a wider ecological context
of restorative justice.

But, just, fair, equitable restoration of a life
irresponsibly taken
does not in any way,
not even a stoic way,
suggest society’s collective right
to irresponsibly take yet another life
now lived across a threshold
of authority
beyond which we cannot responsibly live
cooperatively together.

In choosing to kill,
in choosing to sanction acts of deadly violence,
in choosing to maim and harm,
in choosing deadly and imprisoning revenge,
we stoically choose our own death day
with no more or less authority and responsibility
than for our own birthday,
and each day that follows
between life’s roses
and deadly shaming blaming thorns,
between integrity
and separations
devoid of restorative justice opportunity,
further WinWins
for each and all EarthTribe.

It is difficult to teach how to stoically fall on one’s own responsible sword
when raised in a military-industriously violent society
determined to competitively invest millions of dollars
in deadening revenge
rather than enlivening sacred invitations
to more stoic restorative justice,
celebrating life feeds life birthdays
and eulogizing death breeds death days
lost in mythic pasts
when we first sacrificed virgin children
to a drought-inducing
Vengeance is Mine
SunGod,
even before Holy Roman Empires.

Justice as revenge
assumes our competitive choices
are between brands of death,
while restorative justice,
more stoically balanced,
presumes if we did not first, more primally,
have cooperative choices between brands of life,
then branding and marketing justified death
would remain an ecological and historical moot point
of LoseLose vengeful nihilism.

And so I continued in my smart-ass ways,
wondering what Ms. Liska would think
about balancing our right to life
with fight against condoning death
except where stoically chosen.

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