Ain't No Reason Things Are This Way

"There ain't no reason things are this way.
It’s how they always been and they intend to stay.
I can't explain why we live this way, we do it everyday."

When I first heard this song, I immediately reacted, "Oh yeah, great song. Great lyrics." Ironically, though, I heard the song, entitled it as "awesome", explained it to others how awesome it is, how it speaks truth, and then I returned to "live this way, we do it every day." No explanation for why life is the way that it is-- and certainly no explanation for why we do what we do. Ain't no reason...if I can't explain it, then why not write a note of observation in light of it? I cannot decide whether this song is illuminating, or if I think it's a shrewd mound of horse shit. Quite possibly a combination of both.

Since graduating and gratefully transitioning out of the "studying portal" that had encompassed me, I vowed to research and collectively attempt to understand how the crap society got to where it is today-- lest not answering the question, but consequently exploring the process of our current state.

I think a pivotal point in my search was one night I was laying in bed, listening to Bill Moyers and heard that in the last 2008 presidential election, the financial industry spent a riveting 400 billion dollars on lobbying for specific congressional candidates and elections. $400 BILLION dollars. I was astounded, and wondered what might be the monetary means to feed the world's hungry and provide clean drinking water. I found my results. According to the United Nations Human Development Report, $80 MILLION would grant access to clean water, food, social services, and education to the world's poor for TEN years.

What? Really? Unbelievable, I thought. I could not refrain myself from acting out my anger (Books thrown at the wall again. My sincere apologies dearest wall). I know we care about the world, despite the disproportional distribution of wealth. We do care, but why do we repress the pain that would enable us to exponentially care for the world? We experience the pain, the horror, the dreadfulness of our present day. They're familiar feelings. Deep in our hearts, we understand the essence of compassion: that there is no peace in me until there is a peace for you as well. The pain of the world-- imparted and experienced by each one of us. The urge of compassion is essential to our existence while the relations we make with people and the Earth reach a deeper level of understanding. The pain in itself is disheartening, but serves a purposeful motion to trigger forth some remedial action. Just like a body that suffers physical pain requires immediate attention and nurturing, so too a thorough, generalized pain in our world indicates an opportunity to heal, and to do so together. Pain for the world is not the enemy that hurts us, but our willingness to frivolously discard and dull its existing presence. Unless we deeply experience this pain and forgo repressing it, we may not generate any substantial healing that is capable of happening.

My intention in writing this is to get to the root of why we don't care. Or why I don't care. Or, not that we don't care, but honestly, we don't care to let the pain engross us to again, generate any way of life different than we know. "It's how they always been and how they intend to stay." Mentally, we have been disfigured entirely. All these are fears, ones I have faced and still fight. Others I've read about and compiled here:

1. Fear of the actual pain itself. Got pain? Pop that there pill. Remedies are instant and easy, haven't you heard? If you let the pain get to you too much, it may affect your ability to cope with daily life. That pain could make you fall apart and worst of all, make you a MESS.

2. Fear that the despair will utterly consume us, making us ineffective in reasoning why such things are happening. Will such despair destroy my faith as I know it-- scared that my faith will be deemed as inadequate?

3. Fear of the appearance of despair. Smile brightly. You are on the road to success...you are in the United States of America...turn that frown upside down! The feelings of this pain are thought of as lagging confidence and a lack of hope and general perseverence. We immediately endorse and respond with doctrinal messages of hope that inwardly call us to press on--- but are we resorting to an instantaneous form of remedy that thwarts our path to really experiencing the pain?

4. Fear of the "smart people". Frankly, I am terrified and sometimes extremely timid toward the more informed intellectuals who are sharply educated on the social issues and pain of our world. By now I have undergone a number of instances looking like an idiot, getting those "You didn't know that?" looks, and sometimes even laughed at. It's humiliating-- but who cares about my reputation. My ignorance and inept knowledge in regards to the world is constantly shown. Ask the questions. Better now that our ignorance is made aware to us than 30 years down the road.

5. Fear of feeling responsible for the pain. How do I go about my activities of daily living knowing that we are doing so at the expense of the natural world and the well-being of others? This is my hardest to deal with--- I must learn HOW to deal with these feelings rather than dislodging them to some outer space within.

6. Fear of burdening others. We should proceed onward in order to keep family and friends from worrying about us and seemingly diagnosing us as "depressed." My parents continually think I am in and out of depression. Don't ever let such a diagnosis extinguish the feelings felt for the world. It's just an attempt to make you numb and ineffective.

7.Fear of becoming overly emotional and unstable. True, we are a culture led way too much by emotion, and lacking discipline, but here to say that a mere objective mindset founded on reason outweighs the validity of a "subjective" stance based on intuitions and feelings is absurd. I know being a woman and deemed "unstable and emotional" is highly unfavored and looked down upon by the dominant society. We are expected to shove our feelings inward in an attempt to operate normally with an appearance of confidence and strength.

8. One of the greatest fears: that the powers of pain are too extreme for us to handle or effectively do something. God not only gave us a mind, but a heart as well. Both to fully connect, both to think and feel, and to openly discuss and contemplate-- which hopefully fuels thought into action. We don't want to accept the fact that we didn't create ourselves, and we do not have the ultimate control over our lives. We want to have direct control over our emotions and what it feeds into-- thereby narrowing our focused areas of attention to our extent of direct control. When employing only fractions of our hearts and minds to our itty, bitty controlled areas of attention, our impact is significantly lessened.

Of course these mental fears have evolved over time and subtly communicated to us-- most of the time without words, but rather in underlying expectations guided by societal forces (such as the urges of society to: CONSUME. STAY PUT. OBEY. DIE HAPPY. )I cannot help but wonder if we were highly influenced to engage in the pain for our world then what mighty renewal may be set before us.

I have personally noted also how even the Christian culture that promotes going against the world and the heinous streams of society, finds itself still operating in the same systematic way of thought, but with different means of justification. Though this may be paradoxically understood, I still find myself believing perfect love casts out all fear. But that statement is meaningless if I am not to become aware of the fear or the pain, but rather dislodge it like all other mischievous emotions.

My hope is that we will again listen to the people and pain of our world, and feel it. Not run away or get a hunky hearty feeling of compassion, and then return to we "can't explain why we live this way, we do it everyday." I suck at it, need help and daily encouragement. Sometimes the best thing is the only thing you have: prayer.

Once again, I find myself baffled as to my reoccurring illusory state of mind. How many countless, irrevocable moments have gone by as I have pursued the liberation of my thoughts, fears and inhibitions-- in hopes to "first fix myself, so I can help fix the world"? Tending to my weaknesses, invigorating my senses, revitalizing the awareness within me in hopes of one day effectively transforming some aspect of the outside world. Sequentially, I should care for my inner self as I collect and gather the shredded fragments that consistently implode within. I should become informed and enlightened, and THEN action of paramount effect will prosper in the world. How foolish of an illusion!

"Presupposing that world and self are essentially separate, they imagine they can heal one before healing the other. This stance conveys the impression that human consciousness inhabits some haven, or locker-room, independent of the collective situation -- and then trots onto the playing field when it is geared up and ready."

We routinely "ready" ourselves up, when the healing is interwoven between us, God, and our world. We're not in this world alone, nor can we heal alone.

She proceeds on, "The world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up -- release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature. For some of us, our love of and for the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened." (Joanna Macy) Speak it, sister.

The human heart longs for freedom--longs for fascination-- it longs. The deep cries unto deep-- the craving never vanishes, the longing never subdued, and the heart not yet stopped from beating. How absurd that our bodies are even actually tactile, present, and that for some odd reason this spirit inside of us is contained within a mass full of micro cellular life. I see old ladies with a wild spirit of fire that await the day their bodies will comply with the LIFE of their human spirit.

For all will be made ALIVE in Christ.

It is here that the human spirit takes the dare, the climb, the venturing not to a place unknown, but to a dimension unknown-- to a way of life unknown-- where the inconceivable is conceived. Into God-- so simple in his complexity, and yet so complex in his simplicity.

Once the human spirit is set free and made alive, there is no treading water, only treading a sweet, awe-inspired reverence-- infused with the very miracle of life.

Yummy, yums, yum. A dedication to you, FLOUR.

My old lady friends and I were baking some yummy biscotti yesterday and became amazingly intrigued with the power of flour. I mean flour is the base to BREAD. All bread. Flour is an incredible thing. And you know what?? All the poetry in the world only talks about the cool and pretty "flower." So, here is a fine dedication to the honest,wholesome FLOUR-- the foundation of any baked good in the whole wide world. All you bakers out there, brace yourself, this is a pretty powerful dedication:

FLOUR

Oh you small little bits of grainy stuff in the bowl,
You have such soft and fluffy power to which you hold!

I know we all think of you as dull, white and distinctively bland,
But you deliver such a product of yumminess- it's hard to withstand!

What are you really, though, flour---wheat and chemicals churned together?
And yet you are the base to these fine treats that we heavenly savor.

So, THANK YOU flour-- you may not be noticed or even realized,
Because without you, bread would just be a lump of crap in some disguise.

I was reading various articles and editorials in the World Watch magazine just the other day, and want to extend its insight:

"The greatest destruction in our world is not being inflicted by psychopathic tyrants or terrorists. It's being done by ordinary people-- law-abiding, churchgoing, family-loving "moral" people- who are enjoying their sport-utility vehicles, their vacation cruises, and their burgers, and are oblivious to where those pleasures come from and what they really cost. Oblivious not to what those things cost at the store, but to what they cost when all the uncounted effects of their production and use are added up." -Ed Ayers, Editor

We're here for more than our little introspective, self-absorbed, private pursuits. I have much, much to learn.

That word rings stringently in my ear as it echoes with unusual clarity...WAR. War can refer to the political and international combat where lives are sacrificed and those in power feed on the souls of the innocent--but this war was resounding as my inward cry, deep and hostile. Even as I pronounce it aloud, I feel little understanding of its meaning. The battle. The fight. The thing that must be waged in order to attain some victory. To win. "War waging against your members." I have always haphazardly assumed that if there is war, there must be victory. I so deeply love sweet, sweet competition, since the victory is that much sweeter to my soul. But war is not like competition. No, no-- there is no victory in war-- winning a war is just as horrendous as losing. It's not about winning or losing, for all lose. Mason Jennings--one of the greatest lyricists of all time-- says in song of his regarding war, "I don't want no victory, I just want you back." I don't want any victory either, I just want the peace of God back. I have never come to ponder that war waged in my inside is a wrecking effect of insufficient or unstable peace in my inside. I once read that war is a cowardly escape of the problems of peace. I had not understood this-- that just as we resort to war amidst nations, so we too resort to internal war since our actions neglect the fostering of peace. But then, how do I employ peace to my soul without understanding the war that wages against it?

I don't know. I have noted it all wrong. I almost welcome this war inside, knowing that victory alone will prevail in goodness if I fight. I shall not coward to contend for war, but instead, I shall struggle for peace that surpasses the dreadfulness of war. If we desire peace to transcend internally to our external living, then we must not be so sufficely content with victory to our internally waged war. Labor must prevail for peace, not war. Oh Lord, that you will give us your peace.

"The mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed," says the Lord, who has compassion on you.