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WAWA/WeAreWideAwake is my Public Service to America as a muckracker who has journeyed seven times to Israel Palestine since June 2005.
WAWA is dedicated to confronting media and governments that shield the whole
truth.
We who Are Wide
Awake are compelled by the "fierce urgency of Now" [Rev MLK, Jr.] to raise
awareness and promote the human dialogue about many of the crucial issues of our
day: the state of our Union and in protection of democracy, what life is like
under military occupation in Palestine, the Christian EXODUS from the Holy Land,
and spirituality-from a Theologically Liberated Christian Anarchist
POV.
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The Walls of Berlin and Bil'in |
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 Garth Hewitt: From the Broken Heart Of Gaza |
FACTS ABOUT THE WALL from friends in Bethlehem
Read the truth about the Wall and what is happening today in the Holy City of Bethlehem. |
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Eileen Fleming's Biography
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"We're on a mission from God."
The Blues Brothers "Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils."
George Washington's Farewell Address - 1796 "My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast."
Unamuno
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John Lennon "If enough Christians followed the gospel, they could bring any state to its knees."
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Emma Goldman
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Charlie Rose, 2005
Only in Solidarity do "We have it in our power to begin the world again"
Tom Paine
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John 8:32
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Declaration of Independence |
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We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence |
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Home  Blog December 2009 December 9, 2009
December 9, 2009: John Lennon, Dorothy Day, Pearl Harbor and Wisdom
On December 8, 1980, John Lennon died 9 days after Dorothy Day did.
Dorothy Day entered the Catholic church, I left it.
It was at the age of 12, in the summer of 1966, inspired by John Lennon’s honesty, I tuned out the institutional church.
Up
until I was about six years old, every Sunday morning was spent in a
glass-encased room at St. Bernard’s one holy Roman Catholic Church, in
Levittown, Long Island.
The glass-encased room was called, and literally was, the Cry Room.
Growing
up with television, it was natural for me to stand up close against the
soundproof glass and watch 'the show' on the other side.
Every
so often, I’d hear the priest’s voice filter through the loudspeaker
above my head. But it was all Latin to me: and back then, it really was!
I
see myself now, just as I was then, surrounded by squirming kids and
uptight adults, engulfed by the sounds of crying and whining, and I
truly believed that was church.
Once my younger brothers had
grown, I got to be in the main room and the show lost its mystery to
me, for the Latin had been changed to English and quickly became
routine.
When I was 9, in 1963, two life altering events occurred.
By
Thanksgiving that year, I was overfilled with images of JFK being shot
and John-John during that motorcade. He was just a little guy in a
short coat with his knees exposed who saluted as his father’s casket
rode by and many of America’s other children also bid goodbye to their
childhood.
But, three months later, the gloom was gone, for
the Beatles appeared on a Sunday night in my living room, and the world
as I had known it changed again.
In the summer of ’66, it was
reported that John Lennon made a comment to a friend and reporter that
the Beatles were more popular with my generation than Jesus was.
I agreed with him, for my friends and I knew every lyric to every Beatles song, but nobody ever quoted Jesus.
Lennon made me think about my own hypocrisy, and that led me to drop the institutional church.
It
was in July on a Saturday afternoon, immediately after the ritual of
weekly confession that I knelt at the altar and mindlessly repeated the
same old prayers as the week prior. But on that particular day in '66,
in the middle of the three Our Fathers and ten Hail Mary's, it hit me
like a light. Those words that I uttered never changed anything, and I
got up and walked out, convinced I was doomed for hell, for I had
failed at Confession!
I never doubted there was a God, but
as John said and I believed, “that what people call God is something in
all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all
the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone
wrong…Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary.
It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
Lennon said and
sang, “You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do
anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's
all down to you, mate...All we are saying is give peace a chance...All
you need is love...Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may
say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join
us, and the world will be as one...Reality leaves a lot to the
imagination.”
William Blake penned, “Imagination is evidence of the Divine.”
On October 9, 2005, I wrote:
John Lennon would have been 65 at exactly 6:35 PM today.
On
3/7/04 inside of 216 North Park Avenue in Winter Park, Florida "When
I'm 64" the traveling Lennon Art for Sale Show to benefit Instant Karma
Adopt-A-Classroom; helping teachers, helping Children show cased the
Love and Art of John for Yoko and Sean.
216 [2+1+6=9] North
Park Avenue had previously been a Victoria's Secret and in the far end
where padded bras had once hung had now become a temporary shrine of
unending love of a father for his son.
The drawings upon the
walls had been created out of play between John and Sean. Yoko had
lightly tinged them pastel and turned them into a book called Real
Love.
I was captivated by one in particular titled "Sheep
Meadowing" in which sheep had levitated into the sky and had morphed
into clouds above the heads of sheep meadowing.
After a time of
timelessness cogitating upon those sheep, I reluctantly pulled my head
back through the clouds to continue on to the second Gathering of Women
for Peace, where sisters of every color and creed gathered in harmony
at the Mosque in East Orlando.
We came together to imagine what Peace in the World would look like and what we could do to make it happen.
All day long in my inner ear I did hear "Revolution 9" from the White Album tuned in so very clear and with a few new lyrics:
Number
9 Number 9 Number 9....Let all who are little come in here, Wisdom has
built her house; come eat her food and drink her wine and walk in the
ways of understanding [Proverbs 9]...I'm so very small I'm so very
small, already within the heart of every atom yet extend Beyond the
Universe and connect every mother and child....Number 9 Number 9 Number
9.
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I
think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends...I believe that as
soon as people want peace in the world they can have it. The only
trouble is they are not aware they can get it.-John Lennon
PS-A print of SHEEP MEADOWING now hangs above my bathtub.
"Writing...is
hard because you are giving yourself away, but if you love; you want to
give yourself. You write as you are impelled to write, about man and
his problems, his relation to God and his fellows…The sustained effort
of writing, of putting [words down while] there are human beings [with]
sickness, hunger, sorrow…I feel that I have done nothing well, but I
did something."-Dorothy Day
Dorothy
Day lived a diverse 83 years that culminated in 1980. She spent her
youth amongst anarchists and bohemians, in bars and through unhappy
love affairs. She ended life with a mile high FBI file and a paper
trail that testifies that what she wrote, she believed, she did and
lived.
As
an unwed mother she shocked her progressive friends when she entered
the Roman Catholic Church, and from the inside, she began to critique
it. She called herself a journalist, but she was also like St. Francis
of Assisi, a lone prophetic voice of wisdom that challenged the
corruption of the gospel/good news that Jesus said was non-negotiable
for his follower's; you must forgive to be forgiven and you must
love-even those who do not love back.
In a 1994 issue of The Progressive,
Erwin Knoll reported "the day after the Japanese attack on the U.S.
naval base at Pearl Harbor [was] a day when even the most committed
pacifist might have been forgiven for maintaining a discreet
silence…There was nothing discreet about Dorothy Day."[1]
On
the Sunday after Pearl Harbor, Day spoke out, "There is now all this
patriotic indignation about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and
Japanese expansionism in Asia. Yet not a word about American and
European colonialism in this same area. We, the British, the French,
and others set up spheres of influence…control national states-against
the expressed will of these states-and represent imperialism…We dictate
to [all] …to where they can expand economically and politically, and we
declare what policy they must observe. From our nationalistic and
imperialistic point of view, we have every right to concentrate
American military forces [Everywhere we chose]…But I waste rhetoric on
international politics-the breeding grounds of war over the centuries.
The balance of power and other empty slogans inspired by a false and
flamboyant nationalism have bred conflict throughout 'civilized'
history.
"And
it has become too late in human history to tolerate wars which none can
win. Nor dare we quibble about just wars…All wars are, by their very
nature, evil and destructive. It has become too late for civilized
people to accept this evil. We must take a stand. We must renounce war
as an instrument of policy…Evil enough when the finest of our youth
perish in conflict and even the causes of these conflicts were soon
lost to memory. Even more horrible today when cities go up in flames
and brilliant scientific minds are searching out ultimate weapons.
"War
must cease. There are no victories. The world can bear the burden no
longer. Yes, we must make a stand. Even as I speak to you, I may be
guilty of what some men call treason. But we must reject war: Yes, we
must now make a stand. War is murder, rape, ruin, death; war can end
our civilization. I tell you that within a decade we will have weapons capable of ending this world as we have known it." [IBID]
Day's
prophetic voice is also a friend of wisdom and "Wisdom is a spirit
intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, agile, clear, unstained,
and certain. Not baneful, but loving the good, keen, unhampered,
beneficent, kind, firm, secure, all-seeing and pervading all spirits.
Wisdom is mobile beyond all motion and SHE penetrates and pervades all
things by reason. SHE is the aura of the might of God and a pure
effusion of the glory of The Almighty. SHE is the refulgence of eternal
Light, a spotless mirror of the power of God. And SHE who is one, can
do all things and renews everything. And passing into holy souls from
age to age, SHE produces friends of God and prophets." - WISDOM 7:22-8:1
Day
took Jesus seriously and understood that for a Christian the higher law
is God's not man's and for a Christian, God is love and "love is not
the starving of whole populations. Love is not the bombardment of
cities. Love is not killing...Our Manifesto is the Sermon on The Mount,
which means we will try to be peacemakers."
Day challenged church, state and corporate media via her publication The Catholic Worker, which gave voice to the voiceless and persists today. Everyday
when I sit in front of my keyboard to write; to give myself away
impelled by love in response to a sense of mission or is it duty? This
need to write about man and his problems, his relation to God and his
sisters and brothers, provokes me to daily wonder:
WWDDS?
What
would Dorothy Day Say about America today, our media, government and
churches? What would she publish about Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, and the
fact that 2008 is the 60th Anniversary of Israel, Nakba, and the UN
Universal Declaration of Human Rights upon which Israel's statehood was
contingent upon upholding.
Might she have said:
For
every misunderstanding, every condemning thought, every negative
vibration, every tear torn from a heart, every time one grabbed and
wouldn’t let go, and they only did it because they did not know:
The Divine is within all creation and within all women and men.
And
every tiny kindness you have ever done, every gentle word spoken, every
time you held your tongue, every positive thought, every smile freely
given, every helping hand that opens, helps bring in the kingdom. And
the kingdom comes from above, and it comes from within.
Imagine a kingdom of sisterhood of all creatures and all men.
1. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n4_v58/ai_14951440/pg_1
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"HOPE has two children.The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." - Aquinas |
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"Memoirs of a Nice
Irish-AmericanGirl's Life inOccupied Territory"
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UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions
without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
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The Paradoxical Commandments
by Dr. Kent M. Keith People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway. © 1968, 2001 Kent M. Keith " In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."-Mother Teresa
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“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.”- Lewis Mumford, 1946 |
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The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership....a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures." - William Fulbright |
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“Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.” - Rev. MLK |
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Establishment of Israel |
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"On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations." - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel
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