Tag Archives: restorative justice

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Therapeutic JustUs

Lori Gottlieb
describes mental health mediators
and dream translators
prescribing more cost-effective therapeutic questions:

Who am I?
What do I want?
What’s in my natural health/spiritual wealth
bilaterally balancing way?

What do I want more:
to autonomously control
OR
to be part of some monopolizing,
possibly monotheistic, Thing
bigger than egocentric Me?

May morph
more effluently co-therapeutic
than affluent expertise advice
into:
What do I want
to safely control
AND YET ALSO
be part of some EarthTribe
polyculturally intelligent Relationship?

Healthier
more inclusive
and indigenous
and holistic
and organic
and resilient
than excluded
and punished
and wounded
and thereby imprisoned
and victimized Me

And my LeftBrain capitalized dominance
affluently attracts Gottlieb’s rational health
and safety questions
about wounded AnthroEgos

AND my RightBrain effluent impressions
of slow-growing ecopolitical affluent feelings
grow improved for win/win cooperative global thrival
midst monoculturing win/lose competitive survival
of local health and safety therapeutic improvement
as a resilient panentheistic stress-reducer
organically connected cooperative management
re-connecting
iEarthTribe inter-religious narratives
sacredly inviting
more effluent trickles
and streams
and rivers
and oceans
of EarthTribe living
loving indigenous waters

Descended from prehistoric
more polytheistic
matriarchal cooperative economies
of co-invested local democratic
domestic energy

Tipping toward Tao balanced
bilateral co-governance
healthy communing nutritional cycles
and recycles of ecofeminist
fertile restorative justice
regenerative healing wombs
also asking:

Who are sacred We?
feeling
when we most effluently
fluidly feel
and formatively think?

What does bicameral MeWe intelligence want?

What’s in our ancient monotheistic
anthrocentric
LeftBrain dominant
encultured win/lose dissociative
wounded
traumatized
stress-triggered
climate anxiety

Rabidly emergent RightWing
punishing
and excluding
and victimizing
denial of anthropocentric harm
and fundamental EarthHealth despairing
Lose/Lose polyvagal
neuro-systemic
binomially dissonant
+P v -NP
EitherLeftOrRight unbalanced
+1/-(-0)
BothLeftAndNotNotRight rebalancing
co-therapeutic Way?

Yang affluent
AND
Yin effluent

Ego/EcoTherapeutically
restoring personal secular Justice
AND BICAMERALLY COMMUNING
panentheistic
co-empathic sacred Peace

And maybe a little joy
now and then
becoming more faithfully
inclusively
restoratively
resonantly
resiliently
regeneratively frequent

Bicamerally communioning
co-arisingly dipolar
nonzero open
sacred
integral
WholeHolyHolonicEarth

Systemic eco/theo-logical
trust in therapeutic
not RightWing anthro-elitism
embracing
EarthTribe restorative justice
public health affluence
is also resilient sacred peace
public safety effluence,
reformatively reflowing political ego/eco-integrity,
co-empathic panentheistic compassion.

Unlike our left-hemispheres
taught
and monoculturally
RightWing capital over-invested
win/lose zero-sum assumptions,

Truly therapeutic
EarthTribe resilient polycultural wisdom
is more of an effluently joyful
Eastern bodhisattva peace-growing process
than an affluently measured
messianic critical judgment event

Which I believe
is what the New Testament
good news of Jesus narrative
is ego/eco-systemically
all Holy Nature/Spirited about
indigenously peaceful
Truth affluent
and sacred Beauty effluent,
definitely not RightWing
LeftBrain dominant,
wisdom.

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Uncategorized

Exploring MidTerm MindBodies

Our minds play
an eisegetical game
transubstantiating our debating minds
translating our felt bodies
embodied contexts

Natural/Spiritual environments
felt and touched messages
spoken through ancient metaphoric narratives
tales
mysteries
sacred histories

Felt
egocentrically thoughtful
inside

Touched
eco-invested
sacred polytheistically
outside reverence
for all born holy

And secular
colonizing
patriarchal 1 above

And sacred ecopolitical
root chakra
sensory co-empathic
compassion circling 0 below

The capitalized One neck
lies polynomial lands
and polyphonic seas
of holy-centric eccentricity

Sacred matriarchal mystery
men-paused flow away from
great transitional Paradise
has been Retributive Justice
monotheistically lost
to those judged unredeemed

Since preverbal nature sounds
and nonverbal peace feelings
everyday unrenouned
inside healthy for ego-thrival
and outside verbal wealthy
for eco-systemic resilient safety,
not mere anthro-elitist despair
of win/lose zero-sum competition games
unraveling toward disrepair
like climate anxiety,
degenerative public health,
and deteriorating
distressed loss
into polarized unaware
of wasting depleted ecopolitical wealth,
Lose/Lose geno/eco-cide

The opposite proposition
of binomial
bihemispheric
bi-regenerative ego/eco-conscious minds
seeking bicameral indigenous intelligence

Plays an eisegetical win/win
polytheistic sacred game
transubstantiating our anti-communion
secularizing
dissociating anthro-elitist
LeftBrain dominant minds
translating our sacred sensory-neural
panentheistic conscious feelings

EgoMinds with EcoNeuroSystemic Beautiful Bodies
of elegantly embodied sacred context
profoundly rich environments resiliently felt
but not always win/win seen,
touched with active hope
but not always actually felt filled
with sufficient post-traumatic faith
seen
but not always heard by others
or felt as energy
or even touchable

Like an ego-built mortal prison
and more like an EarthTribe prism
for metaphoric myths

Wise Old GrandMother Moon
Gaian Legends
evolving green EcoBioFeminists
polytheistically Golden Ruled
sacred EarthMothers

Our EarthTribe minds
play an eisegetical
hypothetical win/win game
transubstantiating our doubting
LeftBrain dominant minds
translating our body messages,
embodied neuro-sensory context,
environmentally felt and touched
as if by amused metaphoric
mused matriarchal magic

Poof!
Those icky PatriarchalCapitalists
finally voted out of monoculturing
degenerative
climate traumatizing
stress-triggering
risk to public health resilience
and for losing win/win resonant healing peace
opportunities

For legislative
and EarthTribe executive
and EarthMother judicial
restoring trust
for democratic healthy energy
and heart-felt compassion
for EarthReStorying Justice.

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To A Superior Judge

I could not do what you are mandated to do
every day on society’s justice bench,
weighing retributive justice
against restorative healing.

I cannot look at police
and correction officers’
routinely criminalizing vocations,
and injudicious levying of fines
against the young
and black
and brown
and homeless

Punishing prison sentences
for the most obvious trauma victims
of chronic blue-shirt bullying,
theft,
not really clever lies,
racial profiling,
diminishment
and derision by militarized
and miseducated
mercenaries of a rabid Estate.

My son,
now twenty-seven,
was not expected to reach full emotional maturity
until his early thirties,
as evinced by research on ADHD.

However,
that pessimistic projection
may be optimistically skewed,
not accounting for trauma histories
common to significant learning disabilities,
nor a special education black male experience
in a racist and homophobic “corrections” society.

Economic and political maturity
security
integrity
may never arrive at the Promised Land
for the young black male
separated from his birthmother during infancy
to be parented by a mixed-race gay male couple,
having to defend not only himself
but his out gay younger brother
from predative peers
under the radar
of teachers
and school administrators
disabled by “zero tolerance”
means zero compassion
retributive justice
dysfunctional trauma systems.

This is the third time that police officers have failed
to include in their self-righteous reports
that they took hundreds of dollars out of my son’s pocket
and put it in theirs,
and triumphantly reported only a fraction
of the high quality,
organic cannabis found in his car,
while the majority disappeared

Not reported,
not seen,
not returned;
stolen from my young
black
homeless,
high school diploma with a fourth-grade education,
son.

If my oldest son could easily choose to work
at a full-time
living wage job

If he could get to work on time,
on the right remembered schedule,
with a reliable car,
and feel like he was not being judged,
ridiculed,
and bullied by peers
and supervisors,
shamed and blamed for not being smart enough,
clever enough,
quick-witted enough,
middle-class white enough,
man enough,
successful enough,
then he would not choose to spend long hours
and sleepless nights
delivering the only therapeutic self-medication to others
that has helped him numb the pain
of childhood,
community,
chronic post-traumatic stressors
which have led to his current social,
economic,
and political ostracization,
and potential imprisonment.

I am a certified multicultural community mediator,
so my training is about how to most effectively support
those experiencing trauma
and actively looking for restorative peace
and resilient social justice
therapeutic outcomes.

Mediators begin with identifying the victim(s) feelings
safety needs
and healthy wants,
and then explore the probability
that perpetrators too are victims
of childhood,
community,
and environmental
trauma histories,
fraught with
win/lose zero-sum
contextual stress
critical and chronic
non win/win events.

From that lose/lose potential perspective,
my son has been repeatedly victimized
by police officers
defensively trained
to tolerate their own predative
bullying behaviors.

If anyone would benefit from jail time,
and/or fines,
it is the perpetrators of organized,
anti-social crime.

But, again,
from a restorative justice perspective,
blue-shirt officers, too,
have been victimized by a militarized,
miseducated retributive justice system,
rooted in judgment,
blame,
and shame

And not compassion,
curiosity,
and contextual intelligence

Which is why I could not do
what you are mandated to do.

With unconditional regard,

GD, MDiv, MPA,
and heartbroken DD’s Dad

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Choosing Happy Health

My round white anti-depressants
were trying their faithful best
to listen to my ecofeminist
wise old woman
gardening neighbor,
pulling aggressive weeds

Sharing with me
her morning meditation reflection
immediately after entering dawning eyes
and before exiting her dreamy
comforting
fertile bed

Her opening
and excavating self-invitation
to choose body health nutrition
and mind happiness nurturing
which are snugly associated
for her
like peas and carrots
remembering well-versed voice
intention

But,
not so much for me,
now able to choose health
almost every dawning day
and dusky night
but still struggling
for post-traumatic omnipotence
to thrive toward happiness
by empowered choice,
even if not enlightened voice
articulating all the many thankful ways
remembering well-cultivated rejoice.

What my gardening neighbor
and I speak of
feels like my dull
and darkly present
spatial stuck unchanging place

Which she
unlike me
can also remember
as having evolved through time
from current EarthTribe regenerating days
becoming nurturing seasons
within each annual surviving incarnation

Reversing back toward warm
welcoming first dawn light’s
empowering sacred
thriving invitation.

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Treasuring the Educator

A former friend of mine
tricked me into becoming
something I am not

The volunteer President
of our condo association,
a position I clearly cannot afford
midst trifling disassociations.

We were starting our Autumn tradition
of arguing about next year’s budget
which typically continues
until we recommend something utterly preposterous
to our membership
which they will certify
remains inevitably inept
and fail to ratify.

As usual
I had brought my manicure
and pedicure kit
and was just starting to work on my nails
when I noticed our Treasurer
became more animated
whittling his thick stick
as he became more concerned
about what residents are losing

More than interested
in what resilience we all might gain
by cooperatively discussing
what we hoped to win
by remaining together to complain
rather than lose
by fostering further
whittled down polarization,
debate,
predative Patriarchal Capitalist
zero-sum economic games
not for the faint hearted to explain
and weak-nailed to refrain,
furthering our political apartheid
without EarthJustice
therapeutic rebate

Our parsimonious Treasurer
operates from a presumed strategic position
of holding Aces
in all four empowered
and enlightened suites,
empirical voices,
win/lose trumping win/win choices:

  1. Legal institutional document authority
    which provokes a yawn,
  2. Political membership voting power
    with an 88 to 5 majority
    on his oppressive side,
  3. Economic responsibility
    to our tax and fee paying majority
    with neglected cuticles, and
  4. social-cultural expectations
    for rational
    Straight White Male privileged
    self-interested
    capitalist business behaviors
    like playing golf
    and paying lap dancers
    to do what I would gladly do for free
    if I could avoid these dreadful
    defeating meetings.

While switching to my feet,
I also noticed
our tax-payer responsible Educator
vigorously responded
while vehemently knitting two
and furiously purling three

She moves away from
prior win/win positions
favoring therapeutic strategies
when she votes against
a loan for beat-down residents
to fix our leaky
crumbling corporate problems

Rather than abstaining
because now,
unlike last week,
she has become unclear
about whom
and possibly why
the Treasurer
and the Accountant
and the Bookkeeper
will debit just the 88 Residents
or the 5-vote School
for improvements
exclusive to the residential side
of our sadly governing equation.

I also notice
our scarf-knitting Educator
has moved away from supporting
a win/win trade formerly championed:
White Mansion for the School
and Glass Factory for the Residents

Now she contests this even-steven
to invest in another strategic competition,
win/lose backpedaling,
now claiming disproportionate future values
for bargaining,
debate positioning,
repolarizing
while she rips out yet another ribbing row,
another year too ripped off
not grow

Perhaps,
one day in our dismal future
we will see where this might go

More cooperatively thawing
drawing toward win/win center
for indigenous sacred wisdom values:

  1. licit equity of whittling natures
    and knitting medicine spirits,
  2. politically crafted co-empathy,
  3. economic health-nailed co-investments, and
  4. socially therapeutic
    restorative justice
    favoring win/win strategic right
    and left-handed
    and footed
    health is polyculturing wealth
    communication

Because clearly this night
we are not having our best
multicultural non-fright
cooperative mediation
of momentary delight

Wherein we retain well-manicured focus
on what we anticipate
moving forward more beautifully together
rather than lost in whittled down anxiety
about what we will never support

For lack of egocentric
anthropocentric
monotheistic
monocultural predative gain

As our corporate Treasurer’s win/lose strategy
to some better deferred peace day
EarthJustice regain
without all our polarizing
hocus pocus

To retain a more regenerative win/win wedding
less autonomously win/lose divorced

More cooperatively
and therapeutically discussed
of course
while I re-examine my left pinky
with absent minded disgust

About a now former friend of mine
who tricked me into becoming
some hang-nailed treatment
I am not.

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Womb Wondering Why

We whimsically wondered why
wandered victims by
and through our uniquely human history
of sexual trauma
and therapeutic politics

Mythically hinting
hunting
poly-resonant
mono-vulnerable
half full, half empty
gendered pantheology

Spanning spies discovering economic magic
denies political monoculturing tragic
outcomes for godlike monolithic
monotheistic empire-building

Wherein straight white males
disproportionatly championed
a revengeful
and punishing MonoPolistic Judge
polarizing One-1 omnipotent God

While unstraight
unwhite
unmasculine
marginalized
enslaved
and colonized

Would restore Mother Eartha’s original
nurturing conservational economy

Nutritional ecosystemic politics
for wellness-natured spirits

Advocating sexual polytheistic immanence
imploring sacred not yet empty
circling recycling interdependence
inspiraling half-full health
pregnant with potential
sacred safety
half-empty zero-0 wombed
regeneratively polytheistic.

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Peak EarthWise Regard

Elder indigenous RightBrain
peak win/win resonant experience
is not ego-centric
because interdependent organic systems
are not monopolized by anthropocentric
LeftBrain monotheistic dominance.

RightBrain prominent ecstasy
fulfills win/win co-invested play
of ecologically interdependent
sacred cooperative polycultural wu-wei
democratic energy neuro-systems
secular health Left
embracing sacred wealth integrity
reforming bicameral elder Right
polytheistic polyvagal
ancient communication networks

Commonly held by organic life and death
multi-regenerational
EarthTribal panentheistic inside/outside views

Ego-inside spiritually introverted subjects
also Eco-Other natural co-empathic objects

Objectives
of Right/Left bicameral
peak win/win experiences
not autonomously egocentric
because EarthTribal identities
are not peculiarly anthropocentric
as is monotheistic
monopolistic
monoculturing win/lose LeftBrain dominance

Worshiping anthro-exceptional world views
like Straight White Corporate AlphaMale
historical privilege
as compared to cooperative
co-empathic
co-invested
sacred polycultural ecofeminists

Engaging peak natural/spiritual
nondualistic grace
of bicamerally balanced ecofeminist
vocations and vacations

Advocating total co-investment
in nonviolent communication
for restoring peak experiences
of EarthPeace, empowered right
is also EarthTribal Justice, enlightened left.

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Another Storm

Another storm threatens to come in,
feeling my responsibility
for uncaring
and unresponsive history

Fearing you
more than loving us

Setting out your pails
and plastic tubs
to catch cold
and dreary drips

Impaled remembering
past wet enemies
becoming darker spots
as moisture threatens,
building mold untold
as yet
by angry lips

Dripping windowed frames
and ceiling fixtures
of your felt losses
not equally carried
by more comforted me
opaque with tender crosses

Buried
in how lonely
love can feel
hidden in Earth’s evolving top,
improbable to see

Our together threatening
leaky roof may drown,
which you would have fixed
some months ago,
if you could do so
on your own.

This storm pauses
and brighter rays suggest
a sun still shining
behind dark uncivil distress

Clouds could uncover
our disassociation,
poor and hovering
coveting a sun-drenched nation

Calculating our cost in cash,
but not in minds and bodies
to stop stormy smothers
of inside raining
draining issues,
deep core tissues
thundering crash

Warning we must get this done
before another wild wet storm
fearing you
more than loving us,
undone

Darker clouds build to leak again
while I explain why
you still can’t trust me
to invest in unstormed peace

A contenting roof
unconditionally done

So all EarthTribe
can safely put away our pails
and nails,
defensive weapons,
buckets,
overflowing pans
and spans of climate panic

Now rumbling receding thunder
of fearing you
more than loving us

Turns toward replacing damaged health,
repriming stains repainting wealth
of more warmly wild respect
while together musing
about who is bare surviving
and is not thriving
with what prestorming care,

Remembering who is dry
and fair
and prosperous
and why
we fear this tragic storm
more than loving weathered warm.

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EarthBeauty Passions

To follow our most transparent Light
To lead the most deeply vulnerable Soul
To accompany Beauty’s most trusted Bright

This compassionate communication quest,
like positive psychology’s best
and whole open systemic theories
about all our most synergetic rest

Resists negative
prejudicial
Retributive Judgment
of EgoSelves and EcoOthers

While positively promoting
TransParency
and VulnerAbility.

NonJudgment,
like NonViolence,
feels far weaker
than positive healing communication powers
of ComPassion.

Yet ReStorative CoPassions
do not seem to co-arise
to the enlightenment potential
of TransParency
or the empowering powers
of VulnerAbility.

This potentially positive Trinity
feels like an almost Holy
Whole
Holonic Triune Truth

Like Yellow sunlight’s TransParency,
Love’s Blue oceans of deep rooted
nurturing
VulnerAble panentheistic Soul,
Luscious Red flaring flames
of passionate EarthBeauty

Perhaps ComPassion
is less about humane contentment
and more about divine Beauty,
red-blooded EarthPatriotic Joy
enthusiasm
vitality
viral win/win contagion,
peak sensory-sexual experiences,
red skies of dawn’s climate vulnerable warming
warning
AND dusk’s multiculturally transparent delight

Invoking PolyCulturing CommunioNations
in a more tripartite egalitarian wisdom
full spectral communicating with,
and for, Beauty
Transparency
Vulnerability

And the greatest of these
is the Beauty of all three
redefining a Whole Open Communal Spectrum

Extravagant
exotic
erotic
intricate
intimate
infinite
sensuous
sensory
incendiary
incomprehensible
ecstatic
elegant
handsome
handfulls
of gorgeous nonviolet
win/win conversive
lose/lose reversive
vulnerably restorative
transparentylregenerative
EarthParadise Passion.

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Uncategorized

A Year Ago

About a year ago,
as the COVID pandemic
seemed to subside,
then swell,
happily ebb
and yet impatiently flow

About a year ago
I was noticing cold autumn nights
bringing first frost
to my metal windowframes
and to my post-surgery tired back
and neglected aging heart.

Outside corner unit 315
my view to the south
of brownfield industrial waste
not salvaged
when converting this condo place
to residential co-invested space.

Outside all our interior doors,
a CommonsGrace ignored
for at least a decade of degeneration
now accelerating divestment
by investors seeking rental profits

And also by resident owners
who could not feel certain
that others felt shamed
by a stained
and torn carpet,
elevators that sometimes worked,
cracked and vaporously blind windows,
dilapidated doors,
impending rot
and gloom
and financial doom.

Now
a year later
our parking place
awaits demolition,
to become hauled away
dismissed
disposed of,
further disgraced,
to be repurposed
refaced
in some future highway
graveled trace.

A year later
our communication grace
is in transition
from feeling alone
victimized by our own hired hands
and by our Commons Governors
indulging an economy of capital scarcity,
patriarchal politics
of executive privilege,
an implied theology
of StraightWhiteMale
monotheistic exceptionalism,
as if godly wisdom comes down
only from an enlightened professional high,
and not from within
our sacred ecofeminist administrators
teachers
mothers
grandmothers
sisters
at least as swell.

Co-invested in cooperative
win/win resolutions,
ecologically reconnecting EarthCare constitutions,
health and safety non-prostitutions,
Yang strong and Yintegral flow
of bicamerally balancing institutions,
mindbodies for longterm healthy democracy,
transparent bilateral trust

Nonviolent communicators
cooperatively planning
and priority budgeting
to heal our side-by-side loneliness
by reconnecting cooperative care
for EarthTribe Wisdom:
a formerly healthy
polyculturally wealthy
sacred planet,
a multiculturally inviting property
for growing edible and ornamental plants
and health-minded wealth-embodied people,
enlightened LeftBrain strong and vital
empowering RightBrain co-empathic flow
of root
and gut
and sacred peak experience feelings

While planning not just to survive
our individual autonomous lives
but also to thrive
through EarthCare
for at least another 7-Regenerations
of healthier healing LeftBrain
ecological co-relations
and safer sacred RightBrain
panentheistic
EarthMatriarchal
co-empathic re-connections.

Our individual victim histories
of patriarchal-capitalism
now repurposed
to help heal our co-invested residential experiences
with PolyCultural Communion,
rejoining planet Earth’s great transitioning
climate of health and safety enterprise

Rather than hiding in self-judgment
and Othering shame
for moving in
to unhealthy and unsafe
historic property demise.

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