THIS MAY BE A FIRST

 A triple post in three journals. Now that will probably not happen very often. I had hopes back in the day of using this blog as a place sort some things out and then sort of forgot about it. So we'll see how long I remember it this time. 

THE RIGHTS OF THE REST OF CREATION

 

Salmon image from the Haida people of islands off British Columbia. Now the Columbia River tribes are a little further south than BC but I expect the images the tribes like the Umatillas aren't much different. 

"If this nation has a long way to go before all our people are truly created equally without regard to race, religion, or national origin, it has even farther to go before achieving anything that remotely resembles equal treatment for other creatures who called this land home before humans ever set foot upon it...while the species themselves... fish, fowl, game, and the habitat they live in-have given us unparalleled wealth, they live crippled in their ability to persist  and live in conditions of captive squalor...this enslavement and impoverishment of nature is no more tolerable or sensible than enslavement and impoverishment of other human beings...perhaps it is because we are the messengers that not only our sovereignty as Native governments but our right to identify with a deity and a history, or right to hold too a set of natural lass as practiced for thousands of years is under assault. Now more than ever, tribal people must hold onto their timeless and priceless customs and practices. Ted Strong in the introduction to All Our Relations by Winona LaDuke.

Mr. Strong is an activist with the Columbia River Tribes speaking for the rights of our non human neighbors, especially the salmon people.

RADICALS

 Rufus JOnes Quaker mystic and pacifist

Abraham Muste Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, finally Quaker, mystic and radical, Libereation magazine

Willaim James  the Varieties of Christian Experience

Ghandi WAr Without Violence  by Krisnalal Shridjarani

Philip and DAniel Berrigan, Mennonite John Howard Yoder

Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day

Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited,  The Luminous Darkness, The Search for Common Ground

Meister Ekhart,  Francis of Assissi

Brother Cadfael's Herb Garden

Is planted with rue, sage, rosemary, gilvers, gromwell, ginger, mint, thyme, combine, herb of grace, savoury, mustard, fennel, tansy, basil, dill, parsley, chervil, marjoram, peonies for spicy seeds, poppies for pain. And I would add lavender and true marigold.

AGAPE

Anamchara seems the best place for these ruminations. Was surprised at the size of the book of MLK's writings but it also includes his books. Can't understand what the man was saying until you understand the words he used. English has one word for love. The Greeks had a least three. When King said love you neighbor Agape was the word he was using. Something tells me I'm going to be here a lot more often. Then it's the Liberation theologians and the pagans. Interesting how basic ideas cross "party" lines so to speak.

“Agape means nothing sentimental or basically affectionate; it means understanding, redeeming good will for all men, an overflowing love that seeks nothing in return. It is the love of God working in the lives of men. When we love at the agape level we love men not because we like them, not because their ideals and attitudes appeal to us, but because God loves them. Here we rise to the level of loving the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed he does.

…There is something at the very center of our faith that reminds us that Good Friday may reign for a day, but ultimately it will give way to the triumphant beat of Easter drums. Evil may so shape events so that Caesar occupies a palace and Christ a cross, but one day that same Christ will rise up and split BC from AD, so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name.  Martin Luther King Jr. from A Testament of Hope. Excerpt from Nonviolence and racial justice 1956.

DRUIDS BY ANOTHER NAME?

There's a touch of Morgan Llywellen's Druids in McKillop's land rulers. They not only have an intimate knowledge of the land, in a way they are the land, the people, the plants, the animals. They are there to keep the balance. Maintain the pattern of life. Some of them have powers that look like magic. Magic or a deep understanding of what's real.

THE BALANCE

Caesar's death wasn't a tragedy. It was an attempt by the Maker of All Things to restore balance. Too bad he could only die once.