Who Is Still Standing?

[shondradawson]

I am in a smarting rage this afternoon, but dare to write in such a mood.

I want to shriek and tear at my hair. I want to rip gashes in my face, that they may scab to bear testimony to my size and strength of my fury. I want to accuse, I want to condemn, I want to judge and damn.

Why? Because I can. We all can, but we don't. We all sit on the fence between right and wrong, good and bad, pleading our despicable case about it all being a matter of "perspective." My God, what kind of world do we create when we can neither see or say what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad?

It is no wonder why integrity is the most misspelled word in America.

It is of no consequence that a third-rate individual is considered "good enough," a C-class is not only acceptable, but considered the standard now. Anything or anyone above C-class is no longer considered.

After all, every man receives a proper burial with the appropriate rites of respect, no matter how he lived and believed, no matter how coarsely, no matter how abominably.

This is the definition of humanity: not those we can truly admire, but those we can pity.

Pity is compassion laced with contempt.

Is this the purpose of our lives? To pity and be pitied?

What is the fear of conviction?
What is the believing in something and standing for it? Standing for it and behind it?

My God, I can't suffer a shifter.

Commit evil if you will, but do so with conviction. Don't apologize for what you mean to do, don't excuse it, don't bore me to sobs with your damned perspective. What is the tool of perspective if it is wielded by a drug-addled, alcohol soaked, television and commercial fed, sexually infantilized, willfully ignorant mind? Most human choices and decisions are the fatal acts of an intellectual hemorrhage, all of which are dabbed with a Q-tip of conscience and wrapped in the collective sympathy toward human nature. Human nature, of course, being defined as ranked just above an animal, a C-class creature at best. The grander scale, however, is not considered: for who can aspire to that? That would take conviction. One cannot walk the fence with conviction, but must stand on principle, one side or the other, and honor it.

Honor. There's a word few remember. A noble word, but like all nobility, a title without power.

No, honor is lost, and so the great divides that separated good from evil, right from wrong. Now we walk on fences, all of us, and dare to complain about our lack of confidence and security. We walk the fence and cry and whine about our tensions and anxieties. What, pray tell, did we think would be the result of a lack of conviction? Who is strong, sure, steady and secure, tiptoeing on a goddamn fence?

We have cast our lot.

We are a land of souls who believe strongly surely, steadily, and securely in nothing.

What one believes in will mark the course of one's actions.

What one values will mark the days of one's life.

No soul is able to hide what lies in their minds and hearts. It is THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE LIE that people cannot be easily understood. Indeed, they are as easily read as the sign of pain, clearly seen as the the color of blood. But we revealed to ourselves and others with every damning day.

I say again, we have cast our lot.

I will end my rant here, knowing by the dusk of evening I will have come across a glimpse of the divine, ever present in the world and in all of us, however desecrated by our willful and deliberate defiance. I will see it and know it for what it is, a grand promise, and I will pocket it and save it for such mornings as this. I think of my pocketful of glimpses now, and I rage at the thought of how few and far between they come to me now. But come to me they do, and in trusting they always will, I must be patient. Faith in fear is death. If not allowed to truly live and breathe, it will die for nothing.

If my faith in this world should die, it will not be in vain. For I do let it live and breathe, I let it laugh, I let it weep, I let it sing, I let it bleed. No fear here, but I do rage against its dying, for it is precious to me.

It is a promise I intend to keep.

Standing.

[Historic NY]

1. Pretty powerful writing. n/t

[bullimiami]

2. wow.

well said
are the muddled anger, the muddled intelligence, the muddled lines between good and evil, the muddled lines between truth and lies all by design.

by design so that it is more difficult to point out the injustice, lies and crimes that some men do?

I feel it all too. Hoping one day for the great turning of our consciousness.

[shondradawson]

5. Muddled, Indeed

Muddled is an apt word.

What troubles me most is all those around me sitting down, asking questions, be it friend, neighbor, teacher, or leader, and patting themselves on the back for their higher ambitions. Asking the questions, addressing the issues, confronting the problems, that's what we do. That is ALL we do.

We look for no answer, no resolution, no truth.

"Oh, but it's complicated," I hear it said, in the halls of the church, the state, and community, the home, and the self.

It is only complicated because we are indeed muddled, scuffling on the great dividing lines, balancing ourselves and our world on a fence.

We don't want make accusations and point anyone out lest they implicate us as well. We don't want to condemn, lest our own unsteady footing slip up to fall. We don't want to judge because if the world wasn't bent on mercy, and decided to stand on justice...

too many of us are damned.

Such a thought does not make us become better or greater than we are. Instead we are muddled, panicked and oh-so-cautious to name a wrong, to say what is bad, to believe in anything anymore, not really, should people sit down and start asking, addressing, confronting...

who and what we truly are.

[gottalickbush]

3. Good Job

Great. Kind of makes you think.

[LeftHander]

4. sad.....

The emotion in this piece is what I feel...

the slow decay of humanity that we will try to stop but the ball is rolling....and so many people will suffer for the lack of faith and hope in this country.

This has been a really tough week on us all...

I hope that you will find some peace...somewhere in your heart.

[shondradawson]

7. Thank You

I'm not sure where to find my peace.

With all the ugliness as well as the beauty it can hold, can you trust your heart?

I believe we can. But first and foremost, we must not fear our minds, and that is what troubles me most.

We must not be afraid of our own minds.

Alas, bear witness to the common mind: is it not frightful?

[LeftHander]

11. amazing....

"We must not be afraid of our own minds."

the simplicity of these words should rock us all...it did me.

I have been having discussions about denial with members of my UU church community. Somehow this funk that I seem to percieve has decended upon a lot of people...

Your words above are another hint that there is something churning in the minds of people everywhere. Some choose to deny that there is this great dissonant vibration happening in the universe.

I've been reading some about Sprial dynamics and have some to agree with the fact that humanity is on the verge of a great intellectual change. And I think everyone is feeling this change and those afraid of it are regressing or are in denial.

The most unfortunate aspect is that a few irresponsible and greedy people are manipulatiing those who are afraid and in denial to meet satisfy their own narcissitic desires.

Something is happening. Each day I feel these deep valleys of saddness and then suddenly small glimmers of insight that I can't comprehend somehow flood me...

but it seems that in these times I have this clear purpose...

To pursue making music to try and get people to feel the vibration of the universe and to love my wife and daughter, friends and the spirit of truth and beauty like never before.

The universe is out of balance...and it is up to all the kind, gentle loving people to restore faith in humanity.

I am casting away the bonds of our unbalanced society. Television is going away. Music and more music is going replace the screaming commercials and banal falsetto of television and commercialism...

Music from the hands, Music from the mind, Music from the soul,

I am turning on the Soul Amplifier and cranking it up to 10....

[shondradawson]

14. Thank your for your testimony

Your testimony is so bright and shining!

It is quite a gift you bring this day to me, and I thank you very much indeed for it. I want to speak, speak, speak and so tell...but most of all I want to listen, listen, listen.

For those like you and the others who have posted, the gems for my sorrowful pocket. I came here to today to listen and look for glittering and glowing things.

Something is happening. But what, we cannot see and hear, We can only hope in such a faithless place as this world can seem, and stand fast against the lines moving this way and that way beneath us, trying to trick and deceive us, trying to make me betray ourselves. And some of us do betray ourselves, every damning day, mumbling something about unrealistic expectations, and stuttering that they're only human.

Only human! As if that was something to apologize for, to excuse and explain away. As if cursed we are, to suffer faults and failings that are the only things we should expect of ourselves and each other. Oh, and pity, that damnable, insufferable word! Often times it sugars itself to go down like sympathy, so we don't taste the contempt.

For the stand you have taken in your life I do not pity you. I respect and admire your glitter and your glow of your words.

I hope to hear your music someday...

Until then, you already have my applause.

[DownNotOut]

6. you are such a

powerfull and creative writter. Have you written anything that I can purchase....?

It seems that you have lost all hope. If there is anything I can do to help you make it through your tough times, please let me know.


DownNotOut

[shondradawson]

9. Who Stands In Their Universe?

You are very kind and I thank you.

I am not a professional writer, I'm afraid.

It does seem that I have lost all hope, but I can surely say I have not. However, my faith does get wounded, smart and bleed, as anything living and breathing will do.

I have long-standing convictions that keep me steady even in uncertain moments such as this. I did feel a compulsion today, strangely enough, to write, to speak out, to go and tell it on the mountain, as they say.

My passions are not so epic as I can express them, but are as humbly human as anyone's. My passions are wrought from a vision of promise, as grand and splendid as the universe, in its scope and majesty.

There is more to see in people than our poor self-portraits reveal: more to be mined, gems, glittering and glowing things to be found in us.

Oh, it does make me retch to see all of us so diminished in our own eyes, in each other's eyes, to pity and be pitied. All of us so understanding of our own and another's faults and failings. What of the human capacity and potential for excellence, beyond the scope and majesty of the physical world, but we can now stand in these times and comtemplate the very universe.

We can stand in the universe outside of ourselves: for God's sake, why not the one within? For it also contains stars of thought, and planets of ideas, and galaxies forming gorgeous examples of their whirling dances together.

And dance was meant to delight...not despair.

[Beam Me Up]

8. Excelent rant! Thank you. I share

much that you've said only you've said it much better than I could.

How can we have honor and integrity without Faith? By "Faith" I do not mean "belief" -- but a direct inner connection with a quality of being that is distinct from my ordinary state. In my ordinary state my attention is completely taken by the forces of the outer world -- it is being 'sold' to me, moment by moent. I am in a state of inner distraction from the fact of my own existence -- much less the significance that existence could have for me -- for everything, especially those I claim to love. Much of 'commerce' is attempting to get me to 'buy' a substitute for real being. In my ordinary state I act "as if" I were a real, living, breathing, feeling, knowing, human being. But without any inner attention, without a genuine 'presence', without a watchfulness for those moments when something qualitatively different appears in my awareness, how can I BE truly human -- let alone manifest qualities such as honor and integrity?

Thank you.

[shondradawson]

10. Mind The Stitching

We can have neither honor nor integrity without faith.

Though I do mean a belief, a conviction rooted in what you value for yourself and so for others. That which can neither be bought from me nor sold to me, but is a "direct inner connection with a quality of being" but IS NOT DISTINCT from my ordinary state, my ordinary day, or my ordinary ways. For that is the delicate and seamless stitching that honor and integrity is made of, and worn like an amulet on your neck and above your heart. Like our minds...like our minds.

The stitching is what we must all pay close attention to. The stitching of our thoughts and ideas, or our choices and actions.

Mind the stitching! the stitching and stuff of life. How will and do you present yourself to your own eyes? How will and do you wear through the days and years of your life? Would and should others admire and respect the care and work that has gone into to who and what you are?

Or will the significance of our existence remain nothing more than worthy of a proper burial?

[superconnected]

12. die thread die!

die die die

[Beam Me Up]

24. Ironic, isn't it, that to wish death upon a thread only feeds it? n/t

[Beam Me Up]

23. Yes.

You may be right that there is no distinction to be made between the ordinary -- but I'm not certain. I'm not talking about outer manifestations. The question is, is there any attention -- stitching, as you call it. Isn't having that quality of attention distinct from not having it? Without that I become an atomaton. Without that there can be no genuine revolution.

[canadianbeaver]

13. Your words and thoughts have touched another.....

I am and always will be....standing.

[ArkDem]

15. Nothing like a good bit of babble to get the ole engine running!

[shondradawson]

16. Why Do You Do This?

Why do you strike me when I have done nothing to offend you?

There was another post, superconnected, that wished death upon this thread.

I am just curious as to what about my post you find deserving of ridicule, enough to take the time to scoff at it, when you could have let it be simply for those who take an interest in what I have written.

It is so very disappointing. I have not posted to DU for almost a year, for the very thing that is happening now. It is demoralizing to post on a forum that invites all to share their thoughts, ideas, and opinions, only to have them jeered at, snidely and sarcastically responded to. The point is to agree or disagree and state your case as to why, and what for. But there is something mean-spirited in leaving one-lined "cuts and pinches" on someone's post.

Why?

[ArkDem]

17. Read your original post again.

[shondradawson]

18. This Is My Last Post

[Beam Me Up]

25. Very unfortunate, if true. I would ask you to not give up so easily.

It is true what you say above. Many who post here are very shallow and have no sensitivity -- especially toward the sacred. I chalk it up to having become of age in a world that is nothing but images -- commerce without substance. They have seldom felt anything real. They do not know how it feels to hold someone you love in your arms as they pass from this world. Or they are afraid because they can not see that the sacred is a part of them -- and that the sacred is beyond religion and can not be bought, sold or owned.

Words fail us and fail them and so we need people who feel things deeply and can express them as you can. It really does help us. Not all of us of course. Of course you will be hit by those who can no understand you. But don't believe you are alone and that no one listens. You must know that the very fabric of life itself listens.

Some of us have ears to hear.

[gpandas]

19. probably self righteous...

or, worse, such replies are necessary to bolster their shaky ideas and beliefs. to get the maximum responses, make a typo. these insecue dolts will seize on that typo as if it were the holy grail. i figure these are ones whose spouses dominate, or their bosses are tyrants, so their only release is here at du, where their mealy-mouthed rages are anonymous.

[ArkDem]

21. Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea.

He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the
Castle of aaaaaagggh.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

26. shondra, if you did a search of ArkDem's contributions to threads

This is pretty typical...please don't stop posting..you write beautifully. BTW, I've alerted before and will alert again on said poster. MKJ

[frank frankly]

20. Listen well, friend: this is brilliant. As fine as a wave or sky or song.

You have written some powerful words here.

I will consider some of them for the rest of my life.

Thank you and please disregard those who seek to dampen or deflect what you've expressed here.

Once again, thank you.

[superconnected]

22. political is good

I would be happy if all evolution/faith etc. threads died and this became a political discussion room.

Just my opinion. Anything with faith all over it, or non-faith would get that response from me at this point.