text:
Gathering Song: #647 "God of Our Fathers" please change to "God of all People"
Co-presider: In the name of God our creator, and of Jesus our brother, and of the Holy Spirit our energy for relationships All: Amen.
Co- Presider: God, Loving Creator be with each member and family of our community especially families with members who have served in the military or are serving in the military.
ALL: And with all.
Opening Prayer:
Holy God, Holy Mighty One, you have created all things and you continue to call us to new life ever deeper into relationship with you. Teach us to reverence in one another the gift of life that we share. Give us a hunger for your Word, and let us walk in union with your Spirit all the days of our lives. Glory to you, Source of all Being, Eternal Word, and Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen
Rite of Healing (Pause briefly and reflect on the need to grow more in loving relationships with others and with creation)
Prayer for healing in our community: (All raise hands extended in prayer and recite together.)
See in us, O God, the face of your Christ and heal our brokenness and wounds. Give us the courage to love in spite of loss and mercy to forgive all who have injured us in any way. We ask forgiveness for when we have hurt others in our relationships with them. As always we pray in our Brother Jesus' name. Amen.
Liturgy of the Word:
First Reading Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40
Lector: The Word of God. ALL: Thanks be to God
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 33
All: They are happy whose God is the Creator, the people God has chosen
Second Reading from Celebration "Trinity is our home" by Angie O'Gorman
"…the quark is the smallest subatomic particle; the fundamental building block of everything only comes in threes. In other words, it only comes in relationship. From this quantum discovery it is not a difficult leap to believing that our God, the creative force behind everything, also and only exists as a threesome. Whether one is Creator or created, being in relationship is primary, and threesomes are apparently where it's at. ..
We have, through no merit of our own, the gift of life so that we might grow into conscious loving for eternity. Relationship allows both the life and the growing to happen. Relationship is at the heart of things, in the material world and the Divine…The Triune God loves us before we even know what the word means, and keeps drawing us into that love, and drawing us. Our home is the Trinity." The inspired word of Angie.
All: Thanks be to God.
All: Alleluia sung while book is being carried to the lectern.
Gospel : Matthew 28:16-20
Lector: This is the Good News according to Matthew All: Glory to you, O God.
Lector: This is the good news of our salvation. (At end of Gospel)
All: Praise to you Living God, our Brother Jesus.
All: Alleluia sung after gospel is read and book set in its place.
Blessings for those who have served in the military:
|Cheryl Brandi served in the Navy as a nurse in the Vietnam war
(Will the members of the community who have served in the military please rise; let us raise our hands in blessing)
Loving God we ask your blessings for these men and women of Mary Mother of Jesus who have served America with their military service. You are the men and women, who saluted our flag, who served under our flag and who will be remembered under America's flag for standing for our nation's freedoms and the Common Good. We thank you for your presence amongst us. You are living reminders of willing sacrifice for the values we hold dear as Americans. We offer you our ongoing support as men and women of whom we are proud. May your lives be long and filled with peace. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Dialog homily: Remembering those who have served the USA in the military
Profession of Faith: All: We believe in God, the fountain of all relationships between persons, with all life on earth, between planets and within our galaxy. God's very self energy creating, sustaining and receiving all that exists. We believe in Jesus, the Christ, who reflects the face of God and the fullness of humanity. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the breath of God in the cosmos, who calls us to love and serve in relationship with others without counting the cost. We believe in our global communion and relationships with all in the circle of life including our planet earth. Amen to loving actions on behalf of justice, healing, compassion and equality for all in our world!
General Intercessions:
Presider: Always mindful of God's love and care for us, our relationships with others and all creation, we bring our needs to our loving God.
Response after each petition: Loving God, hear our prayer
Presider: Healing God, we trust that you hear our prayers. May we celebrate our oneness in our relationships with others through our works for justice, equality, and peace. We make this prayer through Jesus, our brother, in union with the Holy Spirit.
ALL: Amen
Offertory: (Procession with gifts: instrumental music)
Co-presider: Blessed are you, God of all creation, through your goodness we have this bread to offer which earth has given and human hands have made. This bread is our faith community seeking knowledge, becoming conscious in right relationships with others and all life. May we individually and as a community live your vision of peace, justice, equality and healing for all. This bread will become for us the bread of life.
All: Blessed be God forever.
Co-Presider Blessed are you, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. This drink is our desire to be in right relationship within our families, our communities and the nations of the world. This wine will become our spiritual drink. All: Blessed be God forever.
Presider: Pray that we become one with all in the blessed Trinity of human and planetary relationships.
ALL: We are gathered as a community to celebrate the gift of life. May we be faithful to the call of healing and building compassionate relationships with others. Amen.
Eucharistic Prayer: (Please gather around the altar)
Presider: Our Triune God who stirred the waters of creation dwells on earth and throughout creation-in our hearts and in the galaxies,
ALL: And in every living being.
Presider: Let us lift up our hearts.
ALL: We lift up our hearts to our Creator who desires healing and right relationships for all humanity and our earth.
Presider: Let us give thanks to the Source of life.
All: It is right to give our triune God of relationships who is present everywhere and in everything, thanks and praise.
All Sing: We are holy…You are holy…I am holy…We are holy.
All: Holy One, we bring you these gifts that they and we may become the Christ Presence. Triune God infuse these gifts with you Presence of relationship amongst all through the power of your Holy Spirit Sofia.
(All Extend Hands) All: On the night before he died, while at supper with his disciples, friends and family Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to them saying, "Take this, all of you, and eat. Do this in memory of
All: In the same way, Jesus took the cup of wine. He said the blessing, gave the cup to his friends and said, "Take this all of you and drink. Do this in memory of me."
The Mystery of Faith:
All: This bread is you, this bread is me. We are one body, a reflection of God's treasures, in communion with all peoples and creation.
Voice 1: Creator of the Cosmos, we thank you that there are 18 galaxies for every person, that our bodies are made of stardust. Every place we turn, you are present, loving us. You call us, "beloved" and invite us to join the dance of creation in a mystical celebration of our oneness with all living things in your divine love.
Voice 2: Jesus Christ of the Cosmos, we rejoice that You, who are More than we can imagine or dream of, dwell in Mystery of relationship beyond all comprehension. We remember that it was you, who said: "Anything I have done in the name of the Creator, you can do, too…and even more."
Voice 3: Sofia Spirit Energy of all Creation, we remember all within our world and church who are working for environmental healing, human rights and justice for all. We remember women and men who are leaders in our church and world especially (mention names of those who have served in the military and those who taught us to be peacemakers )
Voice 4: Father and mother of the Cosmos, we remember Mary, mother of Jesus, faithful disciple. We remember our sisters and brothers, the great cloud of witnesses who have cared for earth's creatures and have blessed our world with their loving service in relationship with God's people. We praise you in union with them and give you glory by working for a more just and peaceful world.
ALL: Through Christ, with Christ, in Christ, in unity with the Holy Spirit, all glory, honor and praise to you, God of relationships forever and ever.
Great Amen: Sung
Prayer of Jesus Sung: "Our Father and Mother"
Sign of Peace: Peace…Hope…Love is Flowing like a River
Litany for the Breaking of the Bread:
All: Christ of the Cosmos, we will live in relationship with you and all creation. Christ of the Cosmos, we will work for healing of the earth. Christ of the Cosmos, we will celebrate justice rising up in your global communion everywhere.
Co-Presiders: This is the Cosmic Christ in whom all creation lives and moves and has its being. All are invited to partake in this banquet of love and to celebrate our relationship with all living beings and our Earth. ALL: We are the Body of Christ.
Communion Song: You are the Face of God
Prayer after Communion:
ALL: Lover of the Universe, we are full of awe at your extravagant love flowing through all living things and your gift of relationships with all of creation. We immerse ourselves in the beauty of nature that surrounds us each day. We are one with our brother Jesus in union with the Holy Spirit. All: Amen
Community Prayers of Thanksgiving/final thoughts
Announcements for the community:
Concluding Rite
Presiders: Christ of the Cosmos is with us All: And loves through us.
Blessing: (with hands extended in prayer):
All: The blessing of God is upon us as we go in the peace of the Cosmic Christ to build loving relationships with all whom we meet! Thanks be to God.
Presider: Go in the peace of our Compassion Christ, let our service continue! ALL: Thanks be to God.
Closing Hymn and Recessional:
"I am Willing" by Holly Near
refrain All: "I am open, I am willing;
to be hopeless would seem so strange.
It dishonors those who go before us.
So lift me up to the light of change.
Homily Starter by Katy Zatsick ARCWP
Reflection by Katy
Today is the Christian feast of the Trinity. Three persons in God, not three gods but One. Theologians are teaching us about the quantum level of creation and what it means for us in our relationship with God and others. Where theologians and physicists meet is the Mystical study of God and who we are in the spiritual life and relationships of our ever evolving planet.
The foundational building block of the universes is the quark, not opposites but in threesome of fractionals, in relationship with each other. And so as I prepared for this liturgy, I began to think about the challenging relationships in my life and how God was present with me. I think about the need for personal healing before we can be in relationship with others-for me to be in relationships with those who serve in the military.
The psychology department at WRAMC diagnosed me with Secondary PTSD as I lived there for 8 months with my only son Jason VSI Iraq Oct 2005. I was in need of deep healing of soul, emotions and body when I left in June 2006. My healing began at an ancient ritual for the Sioux warriors who include Red Cloud and Sitting Bull, veterans of the WWII, Korean, Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. Our God of healing is found in the paradox where a wounded mother met proud and honored Sioux warriors. The prayers were for the healing of Jason but as I prayed with the Sundance circle of Sioux warriors, I began to heal.
My awareness and acceptance as sister to the warriors of our country in the Beloved community of relationship continues to grow. While I was at the Sundance I bonded in relationship with the Sioux through time and with the dancers, honoring the Warriors present and past. We all had lived with the horrible wounds of war, mental, physical and emotional and spiritual. We honored the warriors of the present Sioux nation as they serve in the military for the USA. As I look back the dance honors the warriors and I through participating joined myself to them and their family and friends in prayers for healing. We are all in relationship to each other as our Triune God is in relationship with GodSelf repeated in the quarks of humanity and the never ending galaxies, stars and planets.
I am in their debt for ever, for my relationship with the Warriors of the Lakota Sioux I carry with me as I continue on my own healing journey and as I try to live a deeper relationship with all my brothers and sisters and with my God.
Below is my
1 Belief that we are all warriors
2. Description of the Sundance
3. My experience of the Sundance, Rosebud reservation, South Dakota June 2006-
Please read section titled "The Sundance for Jason's healing pg 14
4. Description of a Quark
From Native Wisdom for White Minds by Anne Wilson Schaef. Pg September 10
"(Being a warrior) It is a willingness to sacrifice everything except your truth, your way of being, your commitment. The ultimate stand is to your commitment to do something with your life that will make a difference."---Douglas Cardinal, Canadian Indian Architect, Writer, and Artist.
Throughout the world, a new breed of warrior is being discussed. These warriors have nothing to do with weapons, battles or killing. Rather, they are taking a stand on living. To fight for life and harmony as if each of our lives makes a difference is no small challenge. ..What if each of us is willing to do something with her or his life that would benefit at least seven generations to come? What if we become warriors for balance and healing?
Warriors don't always have to fight. They may just have to stand up. SUN DANCE
"INDIAN SUN DANCE: Native American Sioux Sun Dance, a man with his chest skin attached, with sinew, to a pole, drummers, spectators" by George Catlin
The Sun Dance is a distinctive ceremony that is central to the religious identity of the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. It developed among the horse-mounted, bison hunting nations who populated the Great Plains in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Those nations at the core of its practice in the bison-hunting era that have continued its practice into the contemporary period include … and the Sioux (including in particular the western most Sioux, who are the seven tribes of the Lakota nation, but also including the Yanktons and Santees, who comprise the six tribes of the Dakota nation).
The Canadian and U.S. governments perceived this ceremony as superstitious rather than religious and suppressed it, and full liberty to practice the Sun Dance was regained only after the mid–twentieth century.
The name Sun Dance derives from the Sioux identification of it as Wi wanyang wacipi, translated as "sun gazing dance." Other Plains peoples have names for the ceremony that do not refer to the sun. ..The medicine lodge is constructed of pole rafters radiating from a sacred central pole. However, the best-known and most widely practiced contemporary form of the ceremony is that of the Sioux, who do not construct a medicine lodge. Instead, the Sioux make a hocoka, or ritual circle, with a sacred cottonwood tree erected in the center and a circular arbor built around the entire perimeter, except for an open entrance to the east, so that the dancing takes place within a central arena that is completely open to the sky and to "sun gazing." However, both traditions, whether that of the medicine lodge or of the hocoka, involve ritual ways of making local space sacred as a setting for renewal of the people's relationship with the land itself and with all the beings of their life-world, both human and other-than-human.
The ceremony is highly variable because its performance is intimately connected to the authoritative guidance of visions or dreams that establish an individual relationship between one or more of the central participants and one or more spirit persons. In all cases, however, the primary meaning is understood to be the performance of acts of sacrifice in ritual reciprocity with spiritual powers so that the welfare of friends, family, and the whole people is enhanced. The Arapaho, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and Sioux nations all practice sacrificial acts of piercing the flesh, often described pejoratively as "torture" by outsiders. …Some Indigenous interpreters have suggested an analogy between the piercing of sun dancers and the piercing of Jesus on the cross, seeing both as acts of voluntary sacrifice on behalf of other beings and the cosmic welfare. While this interpretation may facilitate understanding for some, interpreters must be wary of imposing any religious category that clashes with the central concern of the Sun Dance: to establish and maintain kinship with all the people's relatives, including other humans, the animal and plant relatives of this earth, and the cosmic relatives of the spirit realm.
Friday, June 23, 2006
A Lakota Sioux Sundance Dedicated for Jason's Healing: Background
I have been in SD south of Rapid City since June 14 staying in a cabin owned by Dow's cousins Loren and Gloria. A friend in Chicago had told me of a Sundance on the Rosebud Lakota Sioux Reservation in central South SD about 3 hours from where I am staying. Jane a Jungian analyst knew friends were attending the Sundance and invited me to "stop there" and see if I would want to participate as this four day Sundance was for healing.
Personal Disclaimer:
This entry is a report of my physical, emotional, spiritual experiences and participation in a Sundance ritual for Jason's healing of mind, body and emotions. This is a "rough draft" of the experience as I know I will ponder its impact again and again in the future. I do believe that G-d is everywhere: in whom we live and move and have our being. We and all creation are born, live and die in G-d. I begin to write this reflection the morning after a quiet drive from the Sundance through the Badlands. I was told to "stay grounded" after experiencing the day of Sundance. Driving in the quiet across the National Grasslands of SD with the setting sun before me enabled me to do so on Thursday. This entry is my recollection of the information given to me by the Jungian analysts, dance leaders, and family members who were present and participating in the Sundance rituals. Any mistakes are due to my faulty memory. This is the first time that I have ever attended a Native American ritual. I am including the details because I assume that almost all of the readers of Jason's blog have not had the opportunity to attend a Sundance.
Jungian Analysts
These are my thoughts and reflections as to why Jungian analysts were deeply involved in the Sundance ritual as I have been in Jungian analysis for 8 years. Carl Jung was Freud's pupil who broke with him and focused his own life's work on studying " "the healthy person" One of Jung's important psychological insights is that we are all born with patterns of behavior: mental, physical and most importantly psychological. (DNA research is now revealing that at least 50% of behavior is inherited) These patterns include a relationship with God, in Jung's term the Self with a capital S. Jung called the expression of these patterns archetypes. We are all born into a culture, religion, ethnic group etc. These will "shape" the expression of the archetype of Self into different outwardly rituals, prayers, beliefs, religions, etc. It is important to realize that the source of the search for God and the expression of the relationship is the same, the archetype of Self within each of us. In Jungian insight every soul is female and women have an innate ability to connect with the Self for this reason, women are feminine in soul and gender. For men, the journey inward to God is more difficult for the guide to the Self comes most clearly as the feminine, the anima.
I have been in SD south of Rapid City since June 14 staying in a cabin owned by Dow's cousins Loren and Gloria. A friend in Chicago had told me of a Sundance on the Rosebud Lakota Sioux Reservation in central South SD about 3 hours from where I am staying. Jane a Jungian analyst knew friends were attending the Sundance and invited me to "stop there" and see if I would want to participate as this four day Sundance was for healing.
Personal Disclaimer:
This entry is a report of my physical, emotional, spiritual experiences and participation in a Sundance ritual for Jason's healing of mind, body and emotions. This is a "rough draft" of the experience as I know I will ponder its impact again and again in the future. I do believe that G-d is everywhere: in whom we live and move and have our being. We and all creation are born, live and die in G-d. I begin to write this reflection the morning after a quiet drive from the Sundance through the Badlands. I was told to "stay grounded" after experiencing the day of Sundance. Driving in the quiet across the National Grasslands of SD with the setting sun before me enabled me to do so on Thursday. This entry is my recollection of the information given to me by the Jungian analysts, dance leaders, and family members who were present and participating in the Sundance rituals. Any mistakes are due to my faulty memory. This is the first time that I have ever attended a Native American ritual. I am including the details because I assume that almost all of the readers of Jason's blog have not had the opportunity to attend a Sundance.
Jungian Analysts
These are my thoughts and reflections as to why Jungian analysts were deeply involved in the Sundance ritual as I have been in Jungian analysis for 8 years. Carl Jung was Freud's pupil who broke with him and focused his own life's work on studying " "the healthy person" One of Jung's important psychological insights is that we are all born with patterns of behavior: mental, physical and most importantly psychological. (DNA research is now revealing that at least 50% of behavior is inherited) These patterns include a relationship with God, in Jung's term the Self with a capital S. Jung called the expression of these patterns archetypes. We are all born into a culture, religion, ethnic group etc. These will "shape" the expression of the archetype of Self into different outwardly rituals, prayers, beliefs, religions, etc. It is important to realize that the source of the search for God and the expression of the relationship is the same, the archetype of Self within each of us. In Jungian insight every soul is female and women have an innate ability to connect with the Self for this reason, women are feminine in soul and gender. For men, the journey inward to God is more difficult for the guide to the Self comes most clearly as the feminine, the anima.
I think for Jungian analysts the desire to touch the Self and experience an exploration of the human relationship to God outside European Western religion and culture would be an imperative. This is exactly what Jung did in his travels looking for the patterns giving rise to the lived religious life of the world's indigenous peoples.
A Lakota Sioux Sundance Dedicated for Jason's Healing
The Setting
The Sundance is being held on the property of Florentine's Lakota Sioux Grandmother's property. Found after much searching and asking by taking a drive turning at a closed wooden RC church named St. Rose. Grandmother foretold Florentine "doing things" down there. "There" being a meadow below a hill, lower bluff (location of parking, kitchen, and sleeping tents) and below an open space, I would call a meadow. From the camp of the Jungians about 10 steps were cut away in the dirt of the bluff leading to the back of the dance area and a guard rail installed. The day was perfect, cooler under the trees with the camp on the bluff and very warm in the dance area. Blue sky with clouds abound providing shade intermittently during the dance rounds. About 200 persons attend the dance over the four days.
The Sundance is held at this location once each year, it is the Florentine Sundance, named after the lead dancer. The dance has been held at the site for 13 years. The Sundance is situated in the center of a circle. The circle being formed by shade arbors, once covered by pine boughs now covered with plastic tarp to keep from cutting trees each Sundance. Within the circle created by the arbors, an inner circle is created by foot high red sticks each hung with a tobacco offering wrapped in a red cloth. There is " a gate" marked by two higher white sticks in this circle in the direction of the South, North, East and West. The gates/color of directions are also the four colors of humanity: red, white, black and yellow. For the Lakota the East must not be crossed during the dance so it is blocked off with tape and no one either dancer or audience can cross. The Lakota believe that all energy enters the Sacred Circle through the east and must not be transgressed by a human.
The Sundance Days
This Sundance lasts for four days. It is offered for personal and community healing of the tribe and especially the intentions of those who participate. It is open to outsiders and many whites were present. The Sundance consists of rounds of dance lasting 30 to 40 minutes with about 45 minutes of break in between from about 6 to 6 PM. The dance has drummers, very large 4 or 5 feet across with about 4 drummers to the drum and a number of singers. The musicians change during the day. No jewelry or glasses are to be worn if you are dancing, nothing that sparkles is allowed in the circle. No photography, audio recording or note taking is permitted. No one except the lead dancers can go near the tree except when one makes a flesh offering. Between dances the leaders may speak about the dance, or share personal stories of meaning or teaching about the dance and Sioux spiritual life. There are no watches or program schedule so the pace flows at a natural progression and changes can be made as necessary by the leaders.
The Days:
1. The 30 foot poplar tree is decorated with the prayer flags of each of the dancers. Bundles of tobacco and flesh offerings are also tied to the tree. The tree is set in place with a liver of a buffalo at the base of the pit, the Sioux being dependent on the buffalo for their individual and communal life. The tree (male) is thrust into the Earth (feminine). From earth and sky all life comes and the tree symbolizes the connection of both; all of creation including humanity. It is painted ochre the color of Indian skin. The flags are large pieces of cloth, red white, green, and blue. At about 6 feet a series of flags encircles the trunk and covers the flesh offerings tied in red 1 1/2 inch bundles also encircling the trunk.
2. The second day is dedicated to the Sacred Pipe of the Lakota Sioux. On my arrival I was told there would be no body piercing today. I was glad as I had great reservations in my ability to watch this part of the ritual. Fred told me something akin to this, "It is not torture but a ritual that connects the dancer more closely with all the suffering of humanity and the evolutionary suffering of all creation itself." (It was very good to have a Jungian as a guide to the Sundance. Fred and his wife Karen have been coming to the Sundance for 20 years. This was the day I attended the Sundance)
3. The third day all the dances are dedicated for healing. I was not present for this day.
4. The fourth day the tree and all ceremonial items are taken down. The flags are given to community members for making of blankets. The tobacco from the bundles is smoked "releasing the community's Sundance prayers to God." (I am sorry I do not know what is done with the flesh offerings. I assume the offerings are disposed of respectfully.)
The Dancers
The dancers come from several groups. The men wear red skirts and decorated beaded belts. The women wear long red dresses and skirts/shawls with fringe. No jewelry or glasses can be worn. One group are the four Lakota Sioux leaders including a woman from the Women's Group. Another group is the male dancers from the tribe itself. There are women dancers from the tribe or friends. Some of the dancers were white and came from Germany and Italy. Some were Vietnam veterans. Two dancers were pierced, one in his back and one on his front. These men were tethered to the tree during the dances by ropes connected to their body piercing. The men controlled their own movements either tightening or loosening the ropes as they danced on the ground opposite of each other with the tree in the center.
Flesh Offering
An individual may choose to make a flesh offering. This offering is a "symbol of the gift of myself for and a joining in the suffering of and a prayer for the other." Because of the time it takes, an individual may make between 1 to 4 flesh offerings. I chose to make a flesh offering for Jason's continued healing of mind, body and emotions.
I was escorted to the arcade by Nancy after a morning dance and was met by Fred who takes the flesh offering under sterile conditions. It is a small piece of flesh about 1/4 inch and just deep enough that the wound bleeds. I chose the right shoulder as Jason's right arm is amputated. I was given the Indian pipe (belonging to and used by Fred) to hold and pointed toward the west "The beginning direction for the Sioux" I held the pipe, closed my eyes and began to weep in sorrow for Jason's wounding in combat. Fred said, "Pray to the God you know for Jason's healing, while I do this." "It is done." I opened my eyes and on a very small piece of red cloth, about 1/4 long was my flesh. A patch of sage was placed on my wound to stop the bleeding and the 1 1/2 inch square bundle tied with string.
I was taken to be smudged, a woman was by the outside entrance to the dancer's arbor with a can of burning pine/sage. She held the can and I "purified" myself by moving the smoke over my body with my hands. Previously before the offering I had purified myself with steam. Two young men watched a large bonfire that kept rocks hot. They would pick out a rock on a pitchfork, bring it to you, pour water over it and one would cleanse one's self with the steam as with the smoke/incense.
One of the dancers from Italy, I believe Albert, was to be my escort to the tree. You do not touch the dancers during any of the rituals. He had a hard red bracelet, looking like fabric over wire, that I was to grasp so I did. He led me through the dancer rest area, out to the dance circle through the west gate where we both turned clockwise around and were smudged again with smoke as we entered. He led me to the tree. We were the only persons in the circle. I carried the offering bundle tied with string long enough to let me tie it to the tree. I also carried Jason's album of photos of his healing journey at WR. He lifted up the flags tied to my face height and I tied the bundle to the tree. I said a prayer for Jason's continued healing and was escorted back through the gate and rest area. I was smudged again as I existed the area.
My Introduction to the Community and Request for Prayers
A little later I was told I was to go to the singer/drummer area for an introduction. Jeff one of the analysts dressed in the dance costume made a "formal" introduction of me and my reason for being here. "Katy has a son named Jason who was seriously injured in Iraq last October. She has come to request our prayers for his healing. Please join in her prayers."
The Use of the Sacred Ceremonial Pipe for Jason's Healing
I returned to camp only to be told, "Come the leaders want you to "load the pipe."" Again I was escorted this time by Karen to a break area behind the dance circle. It was separated off by a tarp. We would be hidden from persons walking through the area. Fred said, "We have not done this before at a dance. This is a special honor." I was to pack the pipe and present it to the four leaders of the Sundance. Fred opened a small tobacco pouch, gave me the pipe to hold in my left hand facing west and said we would load the pipe from each of the six directions includes up (sky) and down (earth). I was to pray for Jason's healing all through this "packing the pipe." Fred reassured me that Jason would be healed. I am sorry I cannot remember what he said for each direction. Fred took a twig from the pouch to "tamp the tobacco down." The tobacco was a mixture that included sage-which I could identify.
I would take a pinch of the tobacco, extend my hand in the direction I was told and place in the pipe. Fred would then tamp the tobacco down each time. "Use big pinches" he encouraged me. As I lifted my hand to each direction I could feel power gather and come with the tobacco "into the pipe bowl." It was like holding wind and bringing it into the bowl. Fred added one direction that especially touched my heart. "Gather the circle of elders and all that lives on the earth." I made a circle in the air around me, placed the tobacco in the bowl and felt in the center of the community of believers past, present and future. I was now in Sacred space and time. I was participant and priest.
I was led to the South gate by Karen. She stood at my left, I asked, "Please do not let me do anything disrespectful of the ritual or people." Florentine and Fred and the other dance leaders came through the West gate and approached us. I was to offer the pipe to each person four times. I did so while the drums played and singers chanted. Each person before me was beautiful as I looked at them and they looked away (Indian cultural norm). The Indian woman head of the Women's Group was dressed in blue, not red. I believe Florentine took the pipe and all the leaders went to the tree. Karen said, "Fred is representing you in the smoking of the pipe." The sharing of the pipe took a few minutes. The leaders/priests were smoking this pipe for Jason's healing.
Then the leaders again approached me for the reverse of the ritual, once smoked the pipe was returned to the giver/supplicant. I cannot adequately describe my experience in the return of the pipe to me, I can only try. Each leader presented the pipe to me 4 times. I felt at one with them and the God of All. I looked at each as they handed me the pipe and thought "Namaste," meaning "The God in me greets the God in you." I knew each person had joined with me in praying for Jason's healing. I looked at each person overwhelmed by their beauty and their spirituality. I felt deeply saddened that white men had smoked this pipe, wrote treaties and broke the covenants made within the Sacred reality of Indian spirituality. I felt our participation in this ritual had reworked the broken bonds of trust and helped to heal them. I know in my soul, I asked forgiveness for what whites had done to Native Americans. (An unexpected spiritual experience (always a sign that this is not "of Katy's doing." As this ritual is for healing we should not be surprised that healing of memories between the peoples could occur if we are open and seek it.)
I was astonished, awed, humbled as I received the pipe from Florentine and the dancers walked away together. Fred remained behind and took the pipe from me. Karen led me back to the audience arbor.
Introduction by Florentine
In a few minutes Florentine came to the microphone and began to present my and Jason's story to the people present. He spoke in terms of all veterans and their service to the country and how we should honor them. Most emphatically he emphasized that this "white woman, white mother from Chicago found us to ask our prayers for healing of her white boy injured in Iraq." I was not offended by these terms but understood them to mean that I was an outsider who respected the power and spirituality of the Lakota Sioux and was sincerely asking for their help. I wanted to join with them as we prayed together for Jason's healing.
Then Florentine told us, "I may be out of order, but my grandmother used to sing a blessing for the men before they left for war. I would like to do this for this white mother and her son" Then he sang this beautifully haunting chant. I felt deeply humbled that Florentine would do this for Jason (and brings tears to my eyes again as I remember offering). Florentine spoke about all the tribal members who were present and were honored as serving in the military. He dedicated the next dance for Jason and me, for our healing and for all the veterans who were present.
Karen said, "We must give an offering to the drummers and singers" she went and returned with money that I pressed into the hand of Francis the leader of the drummers.
The Sundance for Jason's Healing
Karen and I went to the back of the dancers arbor to be smudged and wait to be called to the circle. We would peek through the cloth walls of the arbor and see who was being called to the dance. First the leaders, then the vets were placed in front of the west gate about 8 in all, then the men, the women and then friends of dancers. As we stood more vets would come and quickly be smudged and enter the dance circle; the word was spreading that the veterans were to be honored during this dance.
Finally I was called to the circle. I entered holding one of the leader's, named Scott, eagle wing ties of brightly tanned deer hide ribbons. We turned in the center of the gate and were smudged again. Scott led me to the tree to pray again for Jason. This time I carried the photo album of Jason's healing journey at WR. I squatted down at the tree and Scott placed the prayer flags over me. I prayed for Jason's healing and felt surrounded by the leaders. I felt the eagle wings brush my back on the left side and the right side. I stood up and Scott led me back to the circle. I was immediately in front of the vets and the leader sent a woman vet to be on my left, I assume for support and direction. I was very pleased to have her by my side. "Don't worry they will tell us what to do" she smiled.
The drumming and the chant began with strong clear voices and beat. During the dance, the two men were tethered to the pole and both danced with vigor. I felt them connected to the suffering of Jason and all those who suffer from war, especially the veterans who were dancing. Behind me I felt the strong male presence of the veterans who were dancing. I felt them as "buffalo energy" like you see in pictures of horses shaped from the waves of the ocean. The dancers' energy was "formed as the buffalo." I was intrigued by this experience knowing that the collective life of the Sioux is intricately and intimately connected to the buffalo. Sometimes I cried and blessings to Florentine as he would come to me and wipe my tears with his red handkerchief and give me words of encouragement, "Pray for your son, be strong." All I could say is "Thank you."
Often during the dance, all would raise their arms to the heavens, a gesture I understand as praise. During this time I would hold Jason's photo album with both hands and raise it to G-d, offering prayers for him and thanking G-d for Jason's life. All the colors I could see; the tree and its flags and bundles, the sky and the quality of sunlight, the dancers' clothes and the color of their skin were more alive and vibrant than I have ever experienced. It was as if it were a weaving of prayer and meaning most pleasing to the Universe. I could get lost in the color, my soul drank it in. I do not know how long the dance lasted. We were all led out in reverse order of entrance back to the dancers' arbor.
After I entered the shade a reception line formed. All the veterans wanted to meet me and I thought that I should thank them individually. I shook hands and hugged them and thanked them for their service and participation in the dance. Then the women came and I did the same with all those who wanted to greet me. They assured me of their continued prayers for Jason. Florentine asked to see the pictures and with Fred looked at them. Then he said, "Can't look at anymore." I was escorted from the tent and returned to the camp.
Later Tom told me, "Did you hear, one of the drummers saw a spotted eagle. He flew overhead during the dance. It was a sign." I replied, "It is good, the eagle is a sign that our prayers are accepted as a suitable offering to G-d." I later looked up a "spotted eagle" which is not a species but an immature bald eagle. I was pleased, for me this means Jason's young soul "soars on the prayers we offered for his healing."
When we were in the arbor after the dance, Florentine said, "Please invite Jason to come next year! You come back too." I was so honored that Florentine invited Jason. I pray that Jason and Jodi when they are ready would attend the Sundance and meet their new brothers and community of friendship. May Jason reap the healing and blessings of this Sundance for the rest of his life.
I have no adequate way to express my deepest thanks to Florentine and the Lakota Sioux, for Fred and Karen, for the Jungians, for all the dancers for inviting, for accepting me into the community, and joining with me in prayers for healing. All I can say is "Namaste" and Many, many blessings for the journey for each of you and for the Beloved community for we are all one.
Post Reflection especially for Roman Catholics:
I love liturgy and many aspects of the Lakota Sioux religious ritual awakened in me a comparison with the Roman Catholic ritual of the mass. I was struck because of the archetype mentioned earlier is clearly expressed/experienced in both rituals. In other words Jung is right J Again these are my beginning reflections.
The total Sundance is the communal prayer and praise to G-d the Creator. I did not experience a focus on one person (priest). The dance leaders were not alone but always with others and the community within the circle (church) danced. Even those under the "audience arbors" would dance in place, although not all did.
1. The tree in the center decorated and created by the community. I immediately experienced it as an altar for RC's where sacrifice is offered and the center for communal worship.
2. The flesh offering: we call the liturgy, "The sacrifice of the mass" The Sioux use a very small piece of flesh as an "offering of self for others", as Jesus offered himself for others.
3. The smudging with steam or herbs. For me the natural connection is the signing of the cross with holy water when we enter or exit a church. Also the incensing of the congregation and sacred objects as during Easter service.
4. Offering and smoking of pipe. I experienced the pipe offering to be the Offertory, consecration and communion . The pipe itself is a vessel akin to an incense burner in the Jewish tradition used in the Temple. A gift is brought from the community, is blessed and offered. It is transformed by the smoking of the tobacco from object to prayer. It is given back to the community. For me communion was created in the return of the pipe to me, a representative of the community.
5. When Florentine wiped my face during the Sundance, I felt him as Veronica wiping the face of Jesus on the way to Calvary. I think this act of compassion is at the Heart of the Roman Catholic and Lakota Sioux spirituality and liturgy. I can think of no other greater connection to the Creator of All.


text: This is our 3rd stay at Oceania Beach Club. Always very clean and spacious. This year we stayed in #404 and the owners had dvd's, beach toys, even some food in the fridge-all condiments you could need. Loved it. Originally chose it because its so close to Flagler Ave. shops and restaurants. Beautiful beach, not too crowded.Will def return.

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The 'Human Rights' War on Syria
By Jeremy Salt | American Herald Tribune | March 4, 2018
The perfidious role of 'human rights' organizations in the war on Syria has been exposed again with the Amnesty International report on Syria for 2017/18, followed by an equally tendentious article in the Melbourne Age newspaper by Claire Mallinson, Amnesty's national director for Australia.
In the name of human rights these organizations have actually worsened the crisis in Syria. They have never dealt honestly with its primary cause, the determination of the US and its allies seven years ago to destroy the government in Damascus, as part of a bigger plan to destroy the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah strategic axis across the Middle East. Democracy, human rights and the best interests of the Syrian people were never on the agenda of these governments. They were cold-blooded and remorseless in what they wanted and the means by which they sought to get it.
By calling violent armed groups 'rebels' and 'the opposition', these 'human rights' organizations conceal their true nature. By calling the Syrian government a 'regime', instead of the legitimate government of Syria, representing Syria at the UN and representing the interests of the Syrian people, they seek to demean it. By accusing it of carrying out indiscriminate attacks on its own civilian population, on the basis of what they are being told by their tainted sources, they seek to demonize it. By accusing it of carrying out chemical weapons attacks, without having any proof, they perpetuate the lies and fabrications of the armed groups and the governments that support them.
Behind the mask of 'human rights' these organizations are promoting the war agenda of western and regional governments. Some are worse than others. Human Rights Watch might as well be a formal annex of the US State Department, but they all play the same duplicitous game.
East Aleppo is the template for what we are seeing now in the outrage over East Ghouta, the district on the outskirts of Damascus in which hundreds of thousands of people are being held hostage by takfiri armed groups. Aleppo was infiltrated by these groups in 2012 and the eastern sector of the city gradually taken over, as the army was already too hard-pressed on other fronts to stop this happening. Until then Aleppo, a commercial, multi-religious and multi-ethnic city, had managed to stay out of the war but now it was sucked right in. There was nil support in Aleppo for the takfiris but they had the guns and they were ready to kill to get their way. Advancing on government held positions, they devastated the old centre of the city with their attacks. Digging tunnels, they blew up some of its most famous buildings. Art, architecture, history, meant nothing to them. They destroyed the square minaret of the Umayyad mosque and their attacks led to the destruction of the ancient library in the mosque and the massive destruction of the Aleppo souk, one of the oldest and most colourful markets in the world.
In the districts they controlled they ruled by terror, massacre and murder and the institution of the most repressive sharia laws. Under the secular Syrian government, women and men have the same rights before the law, under the takfiris women have no rights that are not granted to them by men. They sought the extirpation of all those they did not regard as true Muslims (Shia and Alawi amongst others): one of their earliest acts was the kidnapping of two orthodox Christian prelates, never seen alive again. It was these armed groups and the foreign governments behind them that were responsible for the dire situation in #East Aleppo, yet it was the Syrian government, the 'regime' as they chose to call it, that was blamed by the media and 'human rights' organizations. The White Helmets, embedded with these groups, and funded by the same governments which had armed and financed them, were used as the main propaganda prop. Their staged rescues filled the pages of the corporate media. They were effectively canonised by George Clooney, the documentary on their bogus bravery and sham rescues winning an Oscar award, unfortunately not for bad acting, which should have been the prize.
As the Syrian military, with Russian air support, began to squeeze these groups in East Aleppo, the propaganda was turned up accordingly. The 'siege' of East Aleppo was no more a siege than the 'siege' of East Ghouta. The people trapped in East Aleppo were being held hostage, as are the people in East Ghouta, by some of the most violent groups on the face of the earth. These trapped civilians were their trump card. Those who tried to leave, they killed, just as the takfiris are killing civilians trying to get out of East Ghouta. Having negotiated the peaceful removal of the takfiris from East Aleppo, along with their families and camp followers, the fall-back position of the media and the 'human rights' organizations was to accuse the Syrian government of their forcible displacement. They made no mention of the captive Syrian soldiers whom the takfiris paused to massacre before they left. They made no mention of the civilians killed by the takfiris as they were trying to escape and no mention of the dancing in the streets, literally, by the people of Aleppo, and the honking of car horns in jubilation, as these killers were sent on their way. This just didn't fit in with the narrative the media and these organizations had been spinning.
The takfiris fight among themselves over territory, power and money but their ideology is the same, based on the destruction of the secular state and society and the imposition of a harsh pseudo-Islamic regime in which women would be reduced to the status of cattle and all Shia and Alawi extirpated. It is they who target civilians deliberately. In Adra, at the Northern end of Ghouta, they slaughtered dozens of men, women and children in 2013, beheading some and pushing others into a bread oven. In 2015, in Douma, they put men and women into cages as hostages, to deter possible advances by the Syrian army. They are shelling the centre of Damascus every day, killing civilians, including many children, including some recently mortared in their classroom.
In its report on Syria for 2017/18 Amnesty International (AI) continues its misleading narrative on the fate of East Aleppo and east Ghouta. Those who support it financially should perhaps be considering where they could put their money and their good intentions to better use. AI refers to districts in east Ghouta controlled or 'contested' by unspecified 'armed opposition groups' and repeats the canard that the Syrian government carried out the chemical weapons attack on Khan Shaikhun in April last year. (Bear in mind the recent statement of US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis that the US had no evidence of the Syrian government using sarin, the agent allegedly fired into Khan Shaikhun.) AI has no proof of this, so why would it state this as fact, except to do more propaganda damage to the Syrian government?
AI refers to 400,000 people 'besieged' in East Ghouta by the Syrian military, when the true state of affairs is that their districts have been infiltrated and that they are being held hostage by extremely violent armed groups. They are besieged from within by these groups, penned in and unable to leave except at the risk of being killed by their captors. The Syrian army is not imposing a siege, it is trying to break it. The Syrian government is accused of depriving these people of access to medical care and basic necessities, when it is one or another of these armed groups, over the years, that has caused the breakdown of efforts to set up humanitarian corridors. Even now the Syrian government is waiting with medical care, buses and accommodation but those civilians who try to leave are being shot at and killed, as they were in East Aleppo.
AI's references to 'forced displacement' from East Aleppo, and the way the 'armed groups' there were 'compelled' to surrender and negotiate a deal that ended the 'unlawful siege' are a grotesque distortion of reality. What was unlawful about the situation in East Aleppo was the presence of the armed groups, what was unlawful was the money and weapons being provided to them by outside governments, in breach of international law, what was unlawful was their killing of civilians and the restriction of their free movement (out of East Aleppo), what was lawful was the finally successful attempt of the government of Syria to break the hold of these groups.
Following the release of the AI report on Syria, Claire Mallinson, the national director of AI for Australia, charged into print under the heading of 'Australians Need to Act on Syrian Monstrosities' (the Melbourne Age, March 1, 2018). Her reading audience would already have been won over as the Australian media has not reported the war in Syria at all but simply pumped out the same propaganda appearing in the US or British press. Others watching Syria closely over the years know what these 'monstrosities' are, and they are not the same as Ms Mallinson's.
These monstrosities begin with the conspiracy, of the US, Britain, France and their regional Middle Eastern allies, to destroy the Syrian government, and thus strike a deadly blow at the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah strategic alliance, whatever the cost to the Syrian people and whatever their aspirations. They move on to the use by these governments of takfiri proxies to do their dirty work in Syria, following the refusal of Russia and China to allow the UN Security Council to be used as the fig leaf for an air war. These governments armed and financed these groups. They did not care who they were, where they came from and what they believed as long as they were prepared to pick up a gun and bring Syria to its knees. These are the master criminals in Syria.
The monstrosities include a media picking up where it had left off in Iraq. It had peddled the lies there, it had peddled them in Libya, it peddled them again in Syria and it is still peddling them. They include the illegal presence of the US in Syria, its killing of Syrian civilians and its attacks on the legitimate armed forces of the Syrian government and people, attacks in which Australian aircraft have shamefully taken part and which have taken scores of lives of Syrian soldiers.
All of this has led to the grand monstrosity, the large-scale destruction of Syria, involving the loss of life of perhaps 400,000 people and the flight of millions of others beyond Syria's borders. But now the same governments and the same media that brought you this war, and the same 'human rights' organizations that have supported it with their one-sided moralising and unbalanced reports, are expressing their outrage at the suffering in East Ghouta, as if this had nothing to do with them.
The monstrosities in the eyes of the Syrian people, if not in the eyes of Ms Mallinson, are on a par with, if not worse than, the genocidal decade of sanctions which preceded the attack on Iraq in 2003 and the crimes which followed this attack, committed by the same governments that are responsible for the onslaught on Syria. The suffering in East Ghouta is terrible and outrage is justified, but it is the causes that need to be identified and they do not include the efforts of the Syrian government and army to defend the country against attack fomented from without.
Ms Mallinson's monstrosities are of a different order. They include the chemical weapons 'reportedly' being used 'again' by the Syrian government against its own people. This smear has been played out time and time again by 'activists' knowing that the media and 'human rights' organizations will snap it up. There is no proof of any chemical weapon attack ever being carried out by the Syrian military, as against abundant evidence of such attacks planned and carried out by the takfiris over the years, including the attack around Damascus in August, 2013.
Ms Mallinson refers to a UN report that Syria is developing chemical weapons 'with the help of North Korea', neatly tying in the two demonized targets of the US government. This is another canard, originating in Washington and designed again to smear the Syrian government and to set it up for whatever might come next.
What she does not say is that this 'report' remains unpublished, that the authors are unknown, that what we know of it comes from an account in the New York Times, which sold the lies on Iraq and has promoted the war on Syria from the beginning. The detail it gives of the material allegedly coming from North Korea indicates that it could have no possible connection with chemical weapons, which Syria does not have anyway, having given them all up under international supervision. Given the completely tendentious nature of this account, why would Ms Mallinson want to raise it except to further blacken the name of the Syrian government?
She refers to the 'warring sides' in East Ghouta as if both are legitimate when only one is, the government of Syria. The other is a collective of extremely violent armed groups sponsored by outside governments, in breach of international law. The presence of US and 'coalition' forces in Syria is a standing violation of international law and their killing of Syrian soldiers and civilians a gross aggravated violation of that law. The only legitimate armed forces in Syria are the Syrian army, which has lost tens of thousands of young men defending the country, and those forces the government has invited in, from Russian air power to Iranian and Hezbollah ground forces.
Ms Mallinson's monstrosities include the hundreds of thousands of 'ordinary men, women and children' she says are at risk of annihilation by the Syrian army's 'siege' of East Ghouta. In fact, the central source of the risk to the people of East Ghouta is not the Syrian government but the armed groups holding them hostage. The 'siege' is not of the people but of these groups. The Syrian military is trying to break their grip, as any army would in any comparable situation. Ms Mallinson accuses 'the Russian-backed Syrian regime' of breaking the ceasefire, ignoring the evidence that the takfiris are breaking it and killing civilians attempting to escape their grip. Only in the past few days they shot at a family trying to leave, killing the parents and shooting at the children even after they reached a Syrian army checkpoint. They are pouring shells into the centre of Damascus every day. There are no references in her account to the 'American-backed' or 'Saudi-backed' armed groups that have created this hell on earth, as she refers to it.
Finally, she appeals to the Australian government, as it assumes its seat on the UN Human Rights Council, to 'show leadership' in bringing these 'abominations' to an end. The problem here is that the Australian government is part of the problem. It fully supports US policy in Syria and has taken part in armed action in Syria, in violation of international law. In September, 2016, its aircraft joined a US-led air attack near Deir al Zor which killed perhaps 100 Syrian soldiers and allowed the Islamic State to regain lost positions. Australia did not apologise for its participation in this outrage, only repeating the US line that the attack was a mistake, which clearly it was not. When the Australian delegate did take his seat on the UN Human Rights Council, he merely echoed US policy, by attacking the Syrian 'regime' and its Russian backer.
If Australia does have a role in Syria, a moral role, a legal role, an independent role, it should not be as a sounding chamber for the US. It should distance itself from the illegal actions of the US and the violence of the takfiris against the Syrian people, their government and their army. It should be supporting the attempts of the government in Damascus to restore its authority over the whole of Syria and not supporting the attempts of the US and behind it, Israel, to break it up. It should support the Syrian people, not the actions of governments which have devastated their country.
It should define policy on the basis of the causes of the situation in Syria, not how they are being misrepresented in the media, by 'activists' embedded with the takfiri groups, by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, by the White Helmets and by deluded or willfully dishonest 'human rights' organizations playing politics, not serving truth, justice and the interests of humanity. This would be a credible role for Australia, an independent role, but it is not one the government is going to adopt.
Everyone should be concerned at the loss of life in East Ghouta. Ms Mallinson does not have a mortgage on morality and empathy with human suffering. How does anyone think Syrians feel about this, Syrians shelled in the heart of Damascus every day, Syrians who have lost fathers, brothers and sons in this conflict, Syrians whose relatives are trapped in East Ghouta or have been killed by the armed gangs holding the whole region with a knife to its throat? Does anyone outside seriously think Syrians want to live under their rule? Syrians know what they want, without equivocation, the purging of these gangs from their midst, whatever it takes. They fully support their army and their government. It is their interests Australians, or anyone else of good faith, should be supporting, not the highly politicized interests of Amnesty International.
Outrage is going to solve nothing: it only serves as the pretext for taking the war to a new level of destruction. The roots of this violence are clear: the decision of outside powers to destroy the Syrian government, their support for violent armed groups committed to an ideology destructive of every value these governments are supposed to represent and their refusal to allow the war to end. For the violence to end these are the roots that need to be acknowledged and torn out.
Jeremy Salt has taught at the University of Melbourne, Bosporus University (Istanbul) and Bilkent University (Ankara), specialising in the modern history of the Middle East. His most recent book is "The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.)
Paved with good intentions: When showbiz & charity become political instruments
By Sam Gerrans | RT | January 5, 2016
Public opinion is increasingly influenced by mixing politics, business and entertainment with good causes. When Mark Zuckerberg announced he was giving away most of his money, people got excited. But charity and good causes are rarely what they seem.
Politics – as the adage goes – is show business for ugly people.
If by 'show business' we mean the implementation of a script worked out in advance by people the public never hears about and dressed up to resemble a spontaneous and passable substitute for reality, then I would agree.
What I see, though, is just as all other norms are being redefined and merged with their polar opposites to form a new mush designed to confuse and debilitate, so the beautiful people are being blended with the ugly ones to form a new compound agent.
The first feet over the line appeared in the 1960s. They belonged to JFK who was the first TV president star, and Muhammad Ali, the first major sports star activist.
Since then, the trickle has turned into a deluge, with a lot of the traffic coming from Hollywood and big business.
Just to be clear: I'm not bemoaning the injection of a lack of purity into the political discourse. I have no time for any politician in power of any stripe who does not actively and openly work to wrest power away from international bankers. Outside of Iceland, I'm still waiting.
But today, it is commonplace – almost expected – for a star or an industrial magnate to get behind a cause.
Charities, philanthropies and foundations
Charities and philanthropies have two attractive qualities if you're in the business of pushing through an agenda quietly. Firstly, they are tax-exempt. Secondly, they are beyond criticism.
People's naiveté is staggering. They believe that industrial magnates and investors – men who have spent their lives screwing people over – suddenly and for no reason fall under the influence of benevolent fairy dust.
They want to believe that the Warren Buffetts and George Soroses – men whose careers are characterized by reflex ruthlessness – are suddenly compelled to go out and do random acts of kindness.
What, in fact, is happening is that these men are creating foundations: corporations that will never pay any tax and which will continue to advance an agenda none of us voted for – in perpetuity.
A foundation will hire and retire generations of directors and workers, all of whom will be suborned to the Articles governing that foundation at the time it was created. The DNA of the founder is enshrined in a legal entity, given boundless amounts of money, and then allowed to follow an agenda invariably directed towards 'change' – change no one ever heard about, never mind voted for.
What foundations (and charities or so-called philanthropies) do not do is give away money. What they, in fact, do is allow money to be released to persons or organizations, which must then do very specific things with it. In short, they subcontract out the implementation of their guiding Articles to the recipients of their 'charity'.
If it is still hard for you to embrace the notion that what is termed 'charity' or 'philanthropy' could be anything but benign, I recommend watching Norman Dodd interviewed by the excellent G. Edward Griffin. Norman Dodd was, in 1954, the Staff Director of the Congressional Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations. He knew how they really work.
Agenda 21
Mainstream media works hard, generally speaking, to defuse criticism of Agenda 21. Similar to philanthropy, it uses warm, fuzzy terminology. It talks, for example, about 'sustainable development' – and who could be against that?
Glenn Beck nailed it when he said: "Sustainable development is just a really nice way of saying centralized control over all of human life on planet earth."
Bill Gates has gone from knowing how to make computer software (which defies any intelligent attempt to use it and now spies on you), to being an expert on the environment (i.e. how all of us should live), which is at the core of Agenda 21.
He couldn't make an operating system that didn't crash and turn blue every time you wanted to do something, but he's got the solution to the problem which was identified by his buddy Al Gore, who went from almost inventing the internet and almost being president of the United States to almost winning the Nobel Peace Prize (he shared it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and who – like Bill – is an expert on how we all should live.
Bill explains with nerd-like zeal the need to reduce carbon emissions to "almost zero" (which, since humans are carbon-based life forms, would require our virtual extinction), and among his toolkit for achieving this aim is "a really great job on new vaccines."
Bill Gates also has a tax-free foundation. Knowing how – and, in fact, if – the rest of us should have children is something of a family business for Gates. His father, W. H. Gates, was a director of Planned Parenthood, and also a 'philanthropist'.
Eye candy
Actors and pop stars get adoration and money – at least the successful ones do. And if you live in a grim area and work in a boring job that can seem like the zenith of all possible joy.
However, the appeal wears off after a while. You don't just want to speak other people's words. You want to say something significant yourself. You've spent your life scrambling up a greasy pole to get respect, only to find yourself secretly afraid that people don't take you seriously.
Such people, then, are nothing if not vain. That's partly why they went into the business in the first place.
So it's not difficult to utilize both their vanity and their proven skills in delivering dialogue they didn't write and don't understand, in order to push forward agendas they could never grasp.
Such people are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett writ small. Very small. Because while they might seem like gods to you, they have no real power. They are only ever one misjudged comment away from never working again, and they are all terrified of having to go back and live with the unwashed masses.
People such as Gates and Buffett and Gore are pretty dull to most people. Joe Public is not accustomed to listening to suits. But he has thousands of hours invested in giving his rapt attention to Hollywood stars and musicians.
This makes them useful to those who really do understand power; who can make where the rubber meets the road – where vanity meets inanity – serve to push forward the agenda the grown-ups came up with.
Pop people are basically used by the system to sell a new weaponized culture to the target audience. It is an obvious move to use those tried-and-tested puppets to sell more of that same agenda.
So Angelina Jolie was gushed over by the Telegraph, in part for her intrepid journey to Darfur and then for lecturing the Council on Foreign Relations (a place where real power resides) on the need to do the things in Darfur – stuff the CFR was planning on doing anyway, but was unable to express in a way that did not send people to sleep.
Bono, for his part, has gone from anthems against the establishment to eulogies in its praise. He is big friends with Bill Gates, for example, and likes to chew the cud with him on the 'charity' they are both involved in.
You name the star, they'll have a cause. From Emma Watson (who at the age of 25 is already an 'activist') to George Clooney to Scarlett Johansson – they are all out there treading the boards of seemingly worthy narratives, looking authentic and concerned, and investing dullness with magic.
The fact that few if any of them could write an undergraduate paper unaided on the subject they are supposedly experts in doesn't matter. People follow the stars. And the people who control the stars know that.
Very occasionally, someone goes off-script; someone claws his way to a position of prominence by sheer grit and talent and then just says what he thinks. Tyson Fury comes to mind.
Then the media is less interested in causes and more interested in damage limitation, wringing its hands at the incongruity of someone capable of Wrongthink being fantastically good at something.
Something tells me Mr Fury isn't going to be invited to share his thoughts with the Council on Foreign Relations or to hug trees with Bill Gates.
I also wonder how long we'll have to wait to find a star using the Oscars to speak out in favor of no sex before marriage or tipping buckets of cold water over themselves to highlight the evils of usury.
I'm thinking Hell will freeze over first.
Read more:Gates Foundation focuses $3bn agro-fund on rich countries, 'pushes GMO agenda in Africa'
George Clooney Opposes War Profiteering While African
By David Swanson | World Beyond War
George Clooney is being paid by the world's top two war profiteers, Lockheed-Martin and Boeing, to oppose war profiteering by Africans disloyal to the U.S. government's agenda.
Way back yonder before World War II, war profiteering was widely frowned on in the United States. Those of us trying to bring back that attitude, and working for barely-funded peace organizations, ought to be thrilled when a wealthy celebrity like George Clooney decides to take on war profiteering, and the corporate media laps it up.
"Real leverage for peace and human rights will come when the people who benefit from war will pay a price for the damage they cause," said Clooney — without encountering anything like the blowback Donald Trump received when he criticized John McCain.
Really, is that all it takes to give peace a chance, a celebrity? Will the media now cover the matter of who funds opponents of the Iran deal, and who funds supporters of the wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc.?
Well, no, not really.
It turns out Clooney opposes, not war profiteering in general, but war profiteering while African. In fact, Clooney's concern is limited, at least thus far, to five African nations: Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, though these are not the only nations in Africa or the world with serious wars underway.
Of the top 100 weapons makers in the world, not a single one is based in Africa. Only 1 is in South or Central America. Fifteen are in Western allies and protectorates in Asia (and China is not included in the list). Three are in Israel, one in Ukraine, and 13 in Russia. Sixty-six are in the United States, Western Europe, and Canada. Forty are in the U.S. alone. Seventeen of the top 30 are in the U.S. Six of the top 10 mega-profiteers are in the U.S. The other four in the top 10 are in Western Europe.
Clooney's new organization, "The Sentry," is part of The Enough Project, which is part of the Center for American Progress, which is a leading backer of "humanitarian" wars, and various other wars for that matter — and which is funded by the world's top war profiteer, Lockheed Martin, and by number-two Boeing, among other war profiteers.
According to the Congressional Research Service, in the most recent edition of an annual report that it has now discontinued, 79% of all weapons transfers to poor nations are from the United States. That doesn't include U.S. weapons in the hands of the U.S. military, which has now moved into nearly every nation in Africa. When drugs flow north the United States focuses on the supply end of the exchange as an excuse for wars. When weapons flow south, George Clooney announces that we'll stop backward violence at the demand side by exposing African corruption.
The spreading of the U.S. empire through militarism is most often justified by the example of Rwanda as a place where the opportunity for a humanitarian war, to prevent the Rwanda Genocide, was supposedly missed. But the United States backed an invasion of Rwanda in 1990 by a Ugandan army led by U.S.-trained killers, and supported their attacks for three-and-a-half years, applying more pressure through the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and USAID. U.S.-backed and U.S.-trained war-maker Paul Kagame — now president of Rwanda — is the leading suspect behind the shooting down of a plane carrying the then-presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on April 6, 1994. As chaos followed, the U.N. might have sent in peacekeepers (not the same thing, be it noted, as dropping bombs) but Washington was opposed. President Bill Clinton wanted Kagame in power, and Kagame has now taken the war into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with U.S. aid and weapons, where 6 million have been killed. And yet nobody ever says "We must prevent another Congo!"
What does George Clooney's new organization say about the DRC? A very different story from that told by Friends of the Congo. According to Clooney's group the killing in the Congo happens "despite years of international attention," not because of it. Clooney's organization also promotes this argument for more U.S. warmaking in the DRC from Kathryn Bigelow, best known for producing the CIA propaganda film Zero Dark Thirty.
On Sudan as well, there's no blame for U.S. interference; instead Clooney's crew has produced a brief for regime change.
On South Sudan, there's no acknowledgement of U.S. warmongering in Ethiopia and Kenya, but a plea for more U.S. involvement.
The Central African Republic gets the same diagnosis as the others: local ahistorical spontaneous corruption and backwardness leading to war.
Clooney's co-founder of the Sentry (dictionary definition of "Sentry" is "A guard, especially a soldier posted at a given spot to prevent the passage of unauthorized persons") is John Prendergast, former Africa director for the National Security Council. Watch Prendergast find himself awkwardly in a debate with an informed person here.
Clooney's wife, incidentally, works for U.S.-friendly dictators and brutal killers in places like Bahrain and Libya.
More nations could soon be spotted by The Sentry. The President of Nigeria was at the U.S. Institute of "Peace" this week pleading for weapons. U.S. troops are in Cameroon this week training fighters.
If the peace organization I work for had 0.0001% the financial support of The Sentry, perhaps the debate would change. So, one thing you can do is support the right antiwar efforts.
Another is to let The Sentry know what it's missing. It asks for anonymous tips when you spot war profiteering. Have you ever turned on C-Span? If you see something, say something. Let The Sentry know about the Pentagon.
Amnesty International, George Clooney and the Bidding of Empire
By JOHN VINCENT | CounterPunch | March 21, 2012
In March this year Frank S. Jannuzi was named Washington DC office head at Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). Frank, a former staffer with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is Hitachi International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most powerful foreign policy pressure group in the world. Over the years, CFR's membership has included 22 US secretaries of state.
Those on CFR's Board of Directors today include Robert E. Rubin, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton and special advisor to the Obama Administration; Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State who when on 60 Minutes was asked by Lesley Stahl on the effects of U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Secretary of State Madeleine Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it"; Peter G. Peterson, of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, who has been pushing for the destruction of Social Security for over ten years; and Penny Pritzker, Chairman and CEO of PSP Capital, who besides being one of Chicago's wealthiest women is also on the Chicago School Board closing public schools in the poorest parts of the city.
These are names not typically associated with humanitarian causes.
In taking his new position Jannuzi is quoted on AIUSA's website as saying: "I am thrilled to be joining Amnesty International and look forward to connecting the passion and expertise of AIUSA with the policy-making community in Washington that I know well."
And how might that work?
In a CFR moderated discussion George Clooney discussed the plight of the Sudanese in the Nuba Mountains who are caught up in the country's civil war. Not surprising the area includes a proposed pipeline route that will carry oil to a seaport in the north.
So George gets arrested on Friday March 16th, and on Monday the 19th AIUSA begins an email campaign calling for Sudanese President al-Bashir to be brought to justice with the banner: What was actor George Clooney doing in jail, while Sudan's president and indicted war crimes suspect Omar al-Bashir runs free?
Interestingly, March 16th was the day AIUSA announced Jannuzi's new position with the organization.
So is AIUSA, along with George Clooney and Hollywood in general, supporting the CFR in their effort to manage the American peoples' perceptions of Africa for the purpose of furthering their government's foreign policy objectives in the region?
Why does AIUSA mount campaigns focused on Africa – Kony 2012, Sudan's al-Bashir, and the investigation of civilian deaths in Libya – but not promote similar campaigns within the borders of the US calling for the arrest of its known war criminals?
And why doesn't AIUSA mount campaigns to stop US humanitarian crimes before they occur? The Iran war is the next human rights catastrophe that will be unleashed on the world, but AIUSA isn't trying to stop it. Why not?
Are AIUSA's commendable humanitarian efforts being used as a screen for the organization's work in the service of the American empire?


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It seems like weeks since I've posted here – most likely because it has been.
I've been focusing all my energy and attention (sorry, kids, cats & garden!) on finishing the paper for my final project for school. It's now complete (!!?!...except that I'm still casting about for an appropriate title) and in the hands of my faculty advisor for a grade. I'm awaiting comments from him and I'm so hoping that he doesn't want rewrites: for the first time in my life, I think I'll be totally satisfied with a C. Or, at least I won't worry about it too much!
It's hard to take in the fact that I'm about to be a college graduate. Actually, I guess I already am one, since the graduation ceremony was at the beginning of June. I started this process the fall after I graduated from high school in 1970. Who knew then that my undergraduate career would encompass six schools (seven with name changes included), several coast-to-coast moves, marriage, divorce, two children and 38 years of my life?
Figuring I'm on a roll, I start a master's program in two weeks. I'm hoping this one will be a bit more straightforward!
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Woot woot! O_o
Posted by Marilyn Bott at 9:04 AM
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Thursday, December 22, 2011
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) was overheard unflatteringly remarking on Michelle Obama's derriere. According to the congressman, the First Lady is a hypocrite in her campaign for childhood nutrition and physical fitness given what Sensenbrenner considers her ample posterior. Sensenbrenner's apparent preoccupation with Obama's backside is a subject for another day but judging from Sensenbrenner's portliness, he would do well to heed her message.
Posted by Craig Taylor at 12/22/2011 07:36:00 AM
Labels: Jim Sensenbrenner, Michelle Obama
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About Me
- Craig Taylor
- Alexandria, VA, United States
- 'To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle." - George Orwell


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GREENWOOD, Ind. (WISH) — A central Indiana man tried to sell medical marijuana on Facebook, authorities said, and that post led to the arrest of him and six others in a drug raid.
Police arrested five people on drug-related charges. Prosecutors said the investigation began when they got a tip about the Facebook post and tracked that man back to a house in Greenwood.
"It's always very quiet around here," said a neighbor identified only as "Justin" who asked us not to show his face on camera. "You know, I've known them across the street for years."
"Justin" lives in the neighborhood near Park Drive and Gooseberry Lane in Greenwood, near Northeast Elementary and Northeast Park. The quiet neighborhood was the site of a drug raid Wednesday morning in the 600 block of Park Drive.
"I got up and heard some commotion going on outside looked and saw a whole mess of cops out there," "Justin" said. "I saw a couple officers carry out a couple totes with the lids propped open with paper bags and stuff like that."
Authorities got a search warrant after seeing a Facebook post by 26-year-old Andrew Konchinsky. The screenshot shows a bag of medical marijuana with a caption that says "come get it."
"If you put something on social media, it's going to be seen by somebody somewhere, so if you're going to sell marijuana on social media, you're probably going to get a knock on your door and your residence searched," said Johnson County Prosecutor Bradley Cooper.
The prosecutor said his office doesn't normally see cases like this involving social media and selling drugs.
"We've had other cases where people would post, like, they're on probation, and there would be a picture of them consuming alcohol or consuming marijuana and that would be a


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Today celebrates... my first Memebox!
Memebox is a box that comes from Korea full of all sorts of beauty products. The Superboxes have themes, such as Pore Care or Herbal products. I chose the 'At Home' one, because I love having spa-nights and I thought it would be cool to have some new products to try~
Now before I get to the actual box its self, some quick notes about the shipping time.
I believe I ordered the box on the 29th of July, and I received it on the 9th of August. Not bad! I chose Standard Shipping, which was supposed to take 10-20 days, and I received it on the earlier spectrum of that range. Yay :3
A description of the box! (Taken from the card which has information about each of the products)
Friday nights out are awesome, but sometimes, a girl has got to take a break! Recharge with this At Home Box because we've got all the self-beauty kits packed into this box! From self hair kits to self skin and makeup kits, this box will surely enhance your look and mood so that you can start off refreshed and energized for the next week! Our simple DIY box will let you pamper yourself right in your own home so that you can get the superstar treatment without having to pay the superstar cost!
Sounds quite nice, no? I don't know about you guys, but I love pampering myself :3 I've always wanted to go to a spa but they're so expensive ;A; *cries* So, when I was trying to pick out a box and I saw this, I decided I would get it. They have other boxes which have makeup in them, but I have enough makeup as it is ehehe xD
|All the stuff!
|The instructions and the description
|Bottle of beans~
|Fancy fancy
|Petri dish, cotton thingies, and spray
|Chin patchx20, Nose patchx40, Q-Tipsx25, Tweezers
|Instructions, packet of cream and the mask
|Description, if any of you are actually reading these c:
|A bottle!
|Much description.
|I love the dandelions on the cap! ;A;
|It's like a night sky, what with the sparkles~
|Last card~
|They're both relatively small~