Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall and all the King’s horses and all the King’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.
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Sitting in a clinic recently, just having had a flue vaccine injection, I overheard a man and woman talking. The gist of the conversation was to the effect that neither could wait for things to get back to normal. Well, being interested in exploring that a little, I tossed in the comment to the effect; yes, but it will be back to a new normal, not the old normal.
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Blank looks and then body language that suggested a further distancing of themselves if they could.
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And so, a quick flick of the eyebrows and then back to yesterday.
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++++++++++++++++++++Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow.
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I have thought about that since.
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What does it take to live in the now, the today?
In other words, what does it take to live, always in transition? In this time of pandemic, the acuteness of that question is emphasised.
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What does it take to let go of ‘tradition’, the old ways, and fashion a path needed for growth?
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Jesus’ example of that certainly does not seem to auger well for an easy road.
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+++1. An outstanding human being;
+++2. Acutely aware of the needs of his society;
+++3. Solitary to a degree, isolated from most save his immediate followers and even they did not +++++understand him some of the time;
+++4. A man exemplar of what it means to be in love.
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Do not expect to be liked for this; it challenged people in Jesus’ day and it is probably fair to say that today is more complicated than yesterday, but that human nature has not changed much in the transition.
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The old Humpty Dumpty has broken apart and the piggy bank has been found to be practically empty; robbed by the hoards of sharks, the so-called 1% with their entailed 20% courtiers of piranha.
Unless you live ‘off shore’ (both your money and yourself), ‘the new internationalists’, start thinking what it might be like going back to a feudal like system, redolent of yesterday. Each day that passes, the possibility of that destiny seems more likely to start to grow; well at least for the rest of us 80%.
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+++++++++++++++++++++No. No. No.
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The way forward is the Jesus way and its name is LIBERATION.
But, if one follows that way at least one thing needs to be kept in mind.
When one flouts tradition/yesterday, one needs to be exceptionally good at the new way, tomorrow’s way. You need to be excellent at what you are doing both for self justification of the changed way you are forging, and also because it makes it more difficult for the arrow and stone throwers to hit your mark as yesterday’s people will try and do.
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Needs a lot more thought and reflection but I sense that it is what the BUG is telling us to do!
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What will today’s evolving liberation look like tomorrow?
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I only wish I knew, or that a crystal ball was conveniently to hand but perhaps a much more pressing question, is what will it take to have the courage to rise to the call?
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Well, one thing it will take that I feel absolutely sure about is another Jesus characteristic; a deep belief in your own self worth.That sense of worth that is as strong as granite; that Archimedean rock to stand on that will not let go, unlike quicksand. That sense that you are here to do a job that comes of a higher calling.
Not a ‘new internationalist’ but a Cosmic Wayfarer.That sense that you have a contract to fulfil. A contract entered into before inception, part of your Cosmic trajectory through eternity.
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That is what I imagine Jesus felt and also what was sensed by the community of John’s gospel about the man Jesus, both remembered and contemplated.

The Sacrificial Lamb
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The sacrificed of a pandemic of economic warfare and failure.
• Loss of who I am
• Loss of the work family
• Loss of livelihood
• Sacrificed to the alter of technology
• Sacrificed to the bestiality of “winner takes all”
• Sacrificed to class warfare
• Sacrificed to political parties of brutalism
• Sacrificed to no taxation for the rich
• …
You get the idea.
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Calling to Prayer
Calling to prayer a past life’s fate.
How is it possible we have learned naught to date
with every avenue available
as history and their horrific debacles
and loss to millions or more during a war
but too of starving
not so much when it comes to one offshore?

But now as the economic divides
who as you West are to now survive?

We are often praying
when the rough hits and no place earthly exists
but when the past history does, why have we ignored
as epidemic, pandemic in all its various economic waves hit,
like the form of a greedy few
plan around wealth as to who has what
and preparing to send warring the likes of you.

——0——

Calling prayerfully
does not stop an arrow fired by the enemy to you.
Calling to a prayerful life
hidden behind bars of steel fortified might.

But in the event of an economical melt down
granted you are not a governmental toy or arm
to those few lot who are to live to plot
the next violent oppressive-ness toward life for us
to become puppets in their defence to succumb?

We are the ones not prayer alone
to raise a banner and stand for life not be owned.

——0——

In a time of Pandemic
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Reading into the early hours of the morning and eventually feeling tired enough to sleep, a thought about so called sacred places flicked across the screen of my mind.
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Why now in a time of viral pandemic? And why sacred places?
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Now I am used to thinking of a sacred place as a church or temple or mosque or some other holy place especially put aside and reserved for religious purposes, and I have been in many hundreds of them over these last forty years or so.
But that is not what this particular thought was saying. It asked the question; are there places other than those put aside for a deity, that take on special significance for me; those that take me out of the everyday humdrum of life and catapult me into a place of inner calm?
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The calm that then makes way for and leads to a sense of the awe-filled recognition of the stupendous beauty of the cosmos we are but a speck of consciousness in.
A night spent camped out in the desert with no pollution or cloud cover to observe the view of the night sky is one example of that sort of place for me.
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A place that also still has special power for me is where, like a thirteenth century French troubadour I first caught ‘sight’ of the beautiful maiden I was destined to marry.
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Or the place where I first caught sight of my first born child.
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Not just place but time and person can seem to be special as well.
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Sacred in terms of set apart; apart where celebration of life seems to be an essential component.
One could go on and on but then along comes the BUG that grabs one’s attention.
We are told that we have to go to a special place to in effect wait to see if the grim reaper eventually calls. And that special place is our own home of what ever form it takes.
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Well, what a surprise. An extra special place!
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Now only a person who doesn’t value life fools around with death.
I mean real death, not the pseudo death that a ‘thrill seeker’ is looking for.
The death that is imminent.
The death that panics to the core.
The death that one loses total control to and terror accompanies.
And this special place we are sent to and possibly experience this, is our home; our own set apart place where we can retreat from the everyday world after a day’s toil.
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Now that’s an idea. One’s home as sacred place.

There are people I know who have a ‘special area set aside’ in their home where they can retreat to when ‘time out’ is needed, but extremely rare the person I have come across in my three score and ten so for, who has designed and built their home with this “sacred” idea as the core principle.
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Do you remember the time back in the 1960’s when the era of architectural fashion was called brutalism; the fashion that when followed by government employed architects to design for mass public housing produced such monstrosities that communal breakdown, mental illness and premature death was a constant danger? A worse example of a de-sacralised home I cannot think of at the moment but I am sure there are many more.
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After being in lock-down for a few weeks with this unexpected forced ‘time out’, how does one’s own home stack up in the sacred stakes? A beautiful retreat, where the soul is fed with beautiful food; or more prison like, where society sends its outcasts?
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This BUG is certainly turning out to be a prolific little teacher. I wonder if they will be teachings that stick? If not, I guess further future schooling will be necessary, with stricter measures being used.
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I do hope not as I am a bit averse to too much pain.

Shock Shock Shock
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Feeling confused?
Feeling insecure?
Feeling fear?
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Then: Don’t worry be happy, it is only the fog of war.
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What war are you talking about?
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Well, the war within one of course.
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The war between:
• The objective life and the subjective life.
• The war between the free man and the slave.
• The war between the inner and outer you.
Perhaps not too easy to engage with if one has not been educated for life, as well as the ubiquitous training for work.
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It seems a bit like being conscripted and thrown into the front lines as cannon fodder unprepared.
Not usually the way it is done in a well organised society which has been prepared in the skills necessary to operate and survive, well before the first shot is fired.
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What a paradox though.
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Prepare for war during the peace. – Almost guarantees there will be a war doesn’t it!
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Well unfortunately there is one going on continually.
The war between good and evil and what makes it so devastating is that it is going on to some degree inside every human being without exception. And the only way to try and inoculate yourself from the worst of it – is to get to know yourself as deeply and thoroughly as you possibly can. Not a recipe for salvation that appeals to many these days it seems.
But there you go, a recipe that has been inscribed in stone at Delphi for thousands of years;
“Know thyself,” “Nothing too much” and “Make a pledge and destruction is near.”
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Know thyself: what is that supposed to mean? – I know who I am.
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The outer man will usually have a bunch of criteria that is used to ‘describe’ who he is; in the West it often starts with – What work you do.
The inner man is another matter, even though we know we have an inner aspect, as one cannot deny their own self awareness. – Consciousness, thought, emotions, instincts, etc.
But what else is there hidden in the depths?
Well psychology is a branch of the humanities (liberal arts) that is supposed to help us. That is if it is not used simply as a tool for fixing problems. Not that fixing problems is not a good thing – very helpful for the outer man.
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Religion is the other traditional carrier and transmission (transmitter) of insights of the inner terrain. For Western Christianity the transmitter started to lose its power source after the Reformation as it couldn’t or wouldn’t update its foundation story in words and images that could be understood for growing numbers of peoples, until today it is virtually almost extinct. And as a result has left the field open for – nothing.
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What does one do when one wants to explore the inner life, but guides are few and far between?
Well the first thing is to understand that ‘time out’ from the work a day world cacophony will be required.
And by that “time out”, one means from the state of mind that is now dominated by total work; to be able to pursue with vigour a way of seeing life differently through engagement with areas like:
• Art
• Philosophy/poetry
• Beauty – particularly in the other and the environment
• Love in all its forms
• Death and dying.
Once this has been ‘tasted’ then the search can begin in earnest to find people who are holders of wisdom (‘Keepers of the Knowledge of Life’) to help you plumb the Mystery. Your search criteria will now have been usefully expanded.
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The sharks and criminals will do everything in their power to keep you solely in the outer man, even unto death and so be careful.
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Life, the search for real life is not an easy path without danger and pain, but remember, the goal is to become a whole human being, not a dead robot, a pawn in the greed infused thirst for THINGS.