Sunday 8/30/09

Yes!! the Kennedy services have inspired me to go baack to church and to once again seek out the words of Jesus and to ignore the words of this Pope and his Cardinals-these wealthy, pampered men who have never known the terror of being pregnant with child that no one, not the father, not her family,etc will welcome, who have never been on their own, never had to find their own way with those who would preach a religion that is false and misleading but fail to offer liberating education, family support and family needs such as child care,housing, medical, transportation (one way bus ride on AC Transit is now $2 and the monthly pass is $80-we need a grant program to cover that for low income folk-say starting at $1500 month for one person-working people cannot afford this although the ACTransit monthly pass is smart in that the riders can start their pass whenever they have the bucks to lay out $80-we need mass transit but mass transit is becoming unreachable for poor people) and by the way the current right-wing religion of mega-churches is just old-fashioned socialism with the guys at the top taking out the biggest share and so I have been hating chrisitanity and then this disgusting Pope so right wing and full of condmnation preaching falsity to the poor and uneducated the better to get their money and I turned away but i am not and could never be athiest nor can I be a "witch"although I understand the love of the earth and the seasons,etc I am culturally Christian and Catholic by choice. I aagree so much with the witches I encounter in Hecate's site. I love the Quakers but I miss my church.

Sunday 8/30/09

Okay during the reading with Josie she diagnosed Candida of which I have had symptoms but which have remained unconscious with me unable to accept the importance of changing my diet, dropping some of this body mass and changing my outlook. she spoke to my lack of security and trust which is causing massive allergies to almost everything ( echoes of my mother here which was in maturity suffered the same maladies). I touched into how unhappy I am carrying Amy and her children with no indication that anything I offer or do makes a difference. The children have been raised in the ghetto oh shutup Clymela their friends are out there going to school working moving on but Amy's children are so injured due to her raging neglect caused by the years of substance abuse that they aare unable to do anything at all. courtney simply goes from the housse to friends with ssttories of her plans that she never acts upon. Arvin has been hospitalized four times since 6/09 for psychological reasons.

saturday continued

I put the original into "save now' mode but can't get it out: I will just post it and continue here. Too jumpy this early AM really for writing. Heat so unusual here, muggy heat early in the morning.

Morre Friday 8/28/2009

So some money camee in. Not what we expected but something. Denzel Washington on the tv-I have taaken to watching the Regis and Kathy show and The View with Buffy wanting to spend good time with her not just handing out pills and gossiping. One wonderful thing about having Barbara back in my life is that she carries the shield of the soocial worker, which she won through her years of working on behalf of individuals as well as on behalf oof the community

Friday 8/27/09

So I am still sad, still shaken that the last Kennedy brother is gone. I think that Edward Kennedy's death brings up the loss of my own parents and the security of that generation-they provided so much that I was free to explore, free to rebel. Now it is up to us and I don't know so far the leaders of my generation seem to want only riches and they don't care what has to happen in order for them to get rich-"flipping" houses that they bought at inflated prices and will sell at even greater inflated prices so that little folks such as myself cannot afford rent-we have to pay for the inflated mortgages. this has created a city such as San Francisco wheere really only the childreen of the very wealthy grow up and in Berkeley where a two bedroom apartment is $1500 to start.
My generation, talking about my generation idiots who listen to FOX news and Rush Limbaugh and who vote for the likes of Reagan.
Chris Hedges-he does "get it" just saw a short piece owith him from You Tube of a talk between him and Christopher Hitchens, (the little pest) who I cannot believe people take seriously. What an aggravating little thing with his childish whining about Christianity and the other religions such as the worship of Allah. He is a drunk with many unresolved emotional conflicts and yet he is still sought out. Hedges goes on calling out to us to wake up while Hitchens whimpers aaabout the suffering of women in child birth and through the childish beliefs of early Judiasm,Christianity and Islam. Myself I rebelled aainst my early upbringing due to those horrible words and thought regards women and sex, women and physical hygiene-men are so afraid of blood. I thought of how the verses in my favorite psalm came to be used against women "formed in the deepest, darkest parts of the earth" one morning stepping out of the shower remembering the days of menstruration how the blood would clot and dry-men would have been grossed out and of course women needed to "go away" until they were "clean" again and could make men happy.

Thursdday 8/27/09

Ted Kennedy passed late 8/25/09. I "knew" of course that his time was near but ooooh! my my!!! to watch the ravenous wolves gather around, the so-called conservatives, hoping that now that we will put him in the ground they can undo so much of what he did for the little ones. I am one of those little ones who gained so much through generous welfare and free school. And like Kennedy, robust sinner, I have learned mercy and forgiveness.
The country is so polarized I don't know what is to become of us. Can Kucinich take his place? what about Schwitzer from Montana? No there are no giants right now although I believe that our leaders are growing right now, living life that will give them the character and experience they need to become great leaders.

And I woke up ravenous-a good sign that I am getting "out of the food"-if I were still eating like I was I wouldn't be hungry upon awakening-I would still be digesting all that I had eaten. I still eaat too much but I will at this point celebrate that I am not eating all the time but at meal times.
Okay..... money came through due the actions of steve's mentor Phil Klasky who got his

sunday 8/23/2009 again

I hit enter to drop down to write which I do all the time and the system published my title. Oh well!! here goes.
Woke up this morning not knowing what I could cook for the family-the lack of planned income for Steve and I has been disastrous: no $$$ and feeding five people including young healthy people has depleted the pantry and I can no longer float checks-I floated so many that bounced that no one wants my business. so here I am busted and I go to make the coffee from the burnt tasting espresso blend I bought by mistake but saved just for mornings like this and what should I spy but pasta on the table and when I look in the frig to get Bebe, the cat her milk but a huge try of meat which I touch and find that the tray is filled with chicken thighs. Oh happy day, Oh happy day we shall have a proper dinner tonight even if someone has taken the bottle of red wine that i first thought we could use to make a coq a vin oh you know what I mean chicken stewed with onion and garlic and herbs and red wine-I would brown the the thighs in the bacon drippings I save from the rare occasions I cook bacon and then into the oven with the wine and some water and the vegetables. UHMM so good with the pasta.
Guess what? turns out that the "thighs" are pork chops so off in a different direction. Will probabloy brown them with flour and then cook gentlely until theyy are done. Hoping that Ann Marie has some lettuce she needs to get rid of and perhaps I have some zuchinni ready and thank tyou mother father god and for all that we have let us use this to support a world that feeds everyone and supports the intelligence and creativity native in all your humans and may the suffering fo pigs end. I feel like a cannibal when I eat pigs-I may get by without eating any but I doubt that at this point.
We had milk and I warmed it and added it to the horrible espresso toast and wonderful! there is enough milk to make biscuits and for making gravy this evening.
Still in the glow of yesterday morning when I was "greeted" back by life in the fgarden and the early morning and the black cat. Free of the guilt of christianity - I think that the person who said that the crucifix is part of the darkness of the time of the Nicean Creed. I have written more than once about the morning in church when we were reciting the Nicene creed and I just "knew" that I don't believe it and I will never believe and I will never teach such lies. I just "knew" that the men who wrote those words didn't believe it but they definitely wanted those words for their servants and tenant farmers,etc in order to keep them under control. I still love Mass not for the slavation so crudely offered but for the human crteativity and out pouring of love and devotion and aspiration, for the magnificent art and discipline and the wonderful music and the incense and the deep quiet and repose. I cannot take seriously the demands of these old men who have never worked, never raised children,etc. I say Please!!!!! but I am deeply Catholic and my soul is rested when I go to Mass. It is just that it is the human expression of love and beauty and devotion that I love and no god of mine would ever expect us to hate ourselves and wallow in self-hatred but would rather emphasize the words of Jesus and the call to love.

Sunday 8/23/2009

saaaturday 8/22/2009

This morning I walked outside to get the paper and I said good morning to the day and for the first time ever in my life I "felt" an answer: Good morning to you said the cool foggy wind and I 'saw" that all the world responds but not in words in presence. I "felt" the responce to my greeting. I noticed a black streak in my peripheral vision and then looked across the
Boulevard and there was a beautiful black cat looking back at me. whoaoaoa what an experience. I always had faith could never give that up no matter what my more sophisticated contemporary fellows might believe I have always had an inner assuarance that "we"/"this" is no accident even if the individual consciousnness knows eternity only through the species. I know the Christians believe in eternal life with Jesus and His Father I am a daughter of the Mother knowing that I don't need to be forgiven original sin, knowing that I am part of the Whole, knowing that this consciousness arises in this body, in this time, in this place and that is enough for me AND this morning This World "spoke" to my greeting and I am blessed.

the turning

Yesterday I reached out to a recovery group for help with the compulsive eating that I finally was able to admit. Sunday I "realized" that I am diabetic which has brought on heart problems, A-Fib,due to nerve damage and I have continued to eat compulsively maintaining a weight of around 215. then lately my knee has gotten very bad with a piece broken off, floating around which was the cause of the "blow-out a few weeks back and severe arthritis. Suddenly I realized that these serious health issues are connected to compulsive eating - aat first I was so embarrassed that I couldn't stand myself. I immediately thought of this recovery group in which I was very active in the 80's but I thought that I couldn't stand to go through the Protestant, immature spiritual thing again. then I thought well I will look them up on GOOGLE and discovered that they have meetings on line and a blog and I signed up to blog and people wwere so welcoming.
Yesterday I was abstinent-a loose abstinance but a real one. I was so surprised by the response my little entry brought. So grateful that this program just keeps chugging along. So grateful that I could once again admit that I am powerless over compulsive eating and that I could accept the community and support of other rrrecovering compulsive eaters.
Lately I became aware of how much of my life I have avoided with food,drugs and once alcohol. I have chosen to stay indoors, as it were,becaause people frighten me,I feel such deep shame over the destruction in my youth, ashamed that I could not finish school, ashamed of all the chores and obligaations that I shrugged off (this is 4th step work)-more later.

OA

Okay back to OA: no more denial if I can help it. Early morning prayers and meditations asking for guidance and what comes to mind? OA. Now it isn't for the hope of attracting men but the hope of saving my life.
Whew!! Julie comes to mind-my friend from those days in the 80's that ended in bouts of the drug Exstasy?) and desire to have been born with trust funds like Julie was. In the end Julie left and still lives on the Big Island.
I recently realized that Julie was mean in the way those born wealthy often are. she never knew the stress of supporting self and children. She knew the pain of death and loss more than most but she never knew the need to accommodate others in order to arrange to meet the basics-rent,utilities,transportation this without even going into the needs of children and holidays and on and on. she seemed so contemptuous.
So this must come up and be offered up to the Light to transform into what it will be.

Monday 8/17/09

Now is the time of S Back and Brian Kerss for birthday. Happy Birthday guys.
Grand square time- mutable-much grouchiness and too many words. I feel weary this morning. courtney's dream job was not and all her flaws came stumbling out and so she lives here and all her stuff is laying around in the living room. I won't accept that whe and her boyfriend stay up all night smoking up every dollar they can get their hands on to buy pot,eating up all the food and then sleeping until aafternoon. I haate this and don't want to be aaround this and will not allow this to go on. Her boyfriend is like a deer frozen in the headlights-he won't go back to school and he can't find a job and whatever is going on at his house he doesn't want to be there. I can't stand that they are lost in darkness,darkness that I have nurtured.
This weekend I have traveled through my old childhood hidden room under earth: neurosis-fear of life, fear of others, fear of self. I excaped these feaars through drugs-pot and alcohol and now pain relievers. "We" all smoked in the 60's and 70's and now I am one of the few still smoking. I am angry because my life is so full of peole that I am not free to get stoned, lay on the bed and read and watch tv and listen to the radio. I gave up tobacco several years ago but I went on smoking dope and gaining weight and this has become a trap. I have become diabetic and my knees are giving out and still I weigh over 200 lbs. I need help. I need to face some things about myself and my life and I need to change,really change. I can see now what a terrible effect I have had on my children and grandchildren.

Feast of the Assumption of Maary

August 15, 2009. Today is the feast day for the Assumption of Mary. As I read a novena for Her on this her day of Assumption I am shaken deeply to realize why CGJung was so excited about her formal, legal assumption: truly the integration of the material and the spiritual. It is in her, through her than we find our way home.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
Sons and Daughters of the Earth, steep yourself in the sea of matter, bathe in its fiery waters, for it is the source of your life and your youthfulness.

You thought you could do without it because the power of thought has been kindled in you? You hoped that the more thoroughly you rejected the tangible, the closer you would be to spirit: that you would be more divine if you lived in the world of pure thought, or at least more angelic if you fled the corporeal? Well, you were like to have perished of hunger.

You must have oil for your limbs, blood for your veins, water for your soul, the world of reality for your intellect: do you not see that the very law of your own nature makes these a necessity for you?

~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, from Earth Prayers from Around the World, edited by Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon Posted by Hecate at 10:24 PM 3 coS
deChardin addressing the overdevelopd thinking function in himself, I suspect, but also addresssing the bewitchment of our era in which worshiping a Sky God, we have sought to do away with the corruption of the flesh, read some St Augustine, that has led to our enslavement of all of creation that we judge as inferior to god's crowning creation, yep you got it!, humanity.

We already have everything that we need to free ourselves. I no longer believe the stories of heaven and hell as being something in the future-somewhere we will go after we die-

Return to prayer

So I sat for a minute maybe four minutes and I prayed and I welcomed the understanding that it is enough that I pray-i don't have to carry the prayer to my desired destination. don't even know what I mean by prayer since I also believe that we are all perffect as we are,all god in delightful manifestation. Still I have a feeling inside for the holy and I am better when I recognize this formally everyday by sitting, breathing deeply and praying.

Thursday 8/13/2009

Peter Singer is at Princeton-I only briefly read his book "Animal Liberation"which was published in 1975!! I so agreed with his determination that we must honor animals because they can suffer and know joy therefore they are more like us than not-I was born with that instinct. I understand that his stance on infanticide when the child is born with apparently impossible defects such as no arms and legs and retarded-I even shocked someone into hating me when I stood up for the earlier mothers and fathers who practiced infanticide a brutal decision by people living brutal lives. I have long been a supporter of abortion and Peter Singer realized that abortion is also infanticide which I also have come to agree with after two women in my life had second semester abortions which were ugly and the pain of which I still carry in my body-the first one hit me when I was at work and I felt the anger of the helpless being crying out from the pain of death. And I also know the unbearable pain of children born to women so wounded that their mother archetype cannot function the pain may be poverty, drugs,insanity, abandonment but at any rate they cannot nurture and protect and educate the young life. AND I also know that there is healing to be found in Christianity when it is practiced by the truely converted not the molested and tortured who practice religion only because they fear the world and they fear Hell. I know that in my old aage I decided that I would rather raise a child myself than see another abortion and I am no good mother-too battered myself-but I no longer believe that late term abortions are a reasonable choice they are in fact the murder of the helpless. However I don't stand for the unborn before I stand for the woman caught in this dilemma-I know only too well the agony of bbirth when one cannot support the life, doesn't have the whatever within to support and nurture that life. women left to their own devises will sstop pregnancy eaarly not later and we know that communities have practiced infanticide and euthanasia through out our history.
I think that this frightens me so in that it brings up the darkness that I don't like, that I fear, that other Americans try to deny. The Nazis embodied all that we would deny and now it is our turn and what will we do when things get really hard? As an astrologer I see the years of Uranus square Pluto coming up-I fear a populist urising