FAMILY

         FAMILY

                      How we practice being with God.

     There‘s a strain of eastern philosophy that says we keep spiritually evolving after our earthly material life is over, till eventually, we reach such a high level of enlightenment, we become part of gods love. We give up our 

selves to be part of god, 
or something.

   Another crazier religion says the big bang was when god exploded into trillions and gazillions of pieces,   and all these pieces of god are trying to bring itself back together again.

     I like to say, ‘we all learn to love all eventually’, meaning, that if there

 is an afterlife, the only thing that makes sense is that when your reincarnations are done and you have experienced everything the universe has to offer, you give it all up and leave your consciousness and become part of the Goddess or God.  I like “the force” from Star Wars the best. 

    Family is the closest orbit we have. It goes beyond the struggle of good and evil and asks the question, is it survival of the fittest? Do we struggle within the family unit? Is it your family versus the rest of the world?Should we all use each other, and whoever is the strongest gets the best, and the weak get

the rest? 

       Not always physical fights, because in families there are 

mental and intellectual and emotional battles that are won or lost continually.

     But when we love each other and co-operate the best goes to most people, our collective pursuit of happiness if you will. Masonic principles embedded in our American Constitution, whether you like it or not.

        Christian families (yes I’m going there), have traditionally used 

wives as chattel and children as employees. Sitting around in 1686 

making

cCandles on Saturday night as Father read the Bible. I couldn’t think of anything more dreary or dreadful. Indoctrination and brainwashing and sometimes just cultural  conditioning, you know, “if you’re happy and you know it, it’s a sin.”

        Islamics are the same way allah allah allah all day long, I mean,

 come on? None of that nonsense is real enough to have and hold in our daily lives. However, being within a loving family is hopefully where a lot of your time is spent. That’s reality. But if you got your wife under a  blanket and would toss your children to the wolves if the Iman asked you to, well where is the dignity in that? 

Hand over your man card dude.  It’s the 21^st century, not the 11^th.

        Everywhere is misery in America. Children are being taken care of carelessly while the parent tries to find enough work to pay for everything. The budget cuts are taking away the summer recreation program. Tension 

is everywhere.

  

       Super duh here, minimum wage is way too low, but we’ll grapple 

with that on another day. My god, the agony I have spent listening to peoples sad spirits when they state that they know they can never make enough to relax in this life.

          Not a survival wage, a tribal wage, a wage that realizes that dollar earned, goes to others in our communities.  It goes 8 different places in a month around town in a locally based economy. When that dollar is eaten alive by predatory capitalism in the form of a destroyed resource, or a late fee from an international banking corporation, it is lost forever. Stolen.

    

Progressives have been around a long time and here is the theme of the current Progressive Party, “We of The American Progressive Party seek government accountability, an end to wars of aggression, a vibrant economy, including living wage jobs, sustainable environments, social justice and constitutional rights for all.”   I would like to add from my own box of sayings, “encode liberty, embed equality, ostracize criminality and vanquish cruelty.”  \

The only way to create abundance is to take something and make it bigger. A seed from a cherry becomes a cherry tree, producing 

60 thousand cherries in its lifetime. It gets sawn down and ‘ol Uncle Mike makes a couple of chairs from it. Nice cherry wood. Ummmm cherry, go good right next to the stairwell. “I’d rather he made a chest of drawers though, its what I really needed.” Families aren’t perfect but it’s a wonderful place to learn about love.

        So there we have the basis of the “family” farm. Grow what you 

need with a couple cash crops to buy what you can’t make. Look at the 

butterfly backwash from one goddam little seed! Heirloom seeds are part of our American family heritage and that goes back thousands of years with the First People. There was always corn seed saved in case of drought or 

crop failure.

        This is where my battle with Bayer begins, having bought up the flailing Monsanto and poised to poison small communities forever. This new Oligarchic Octopus will have a BIG advertising budget and the advertising budget will convince everyone that Bayer is looking out for 

our best interests. This frankencorporation, you betcha, loves you very much.

        Capitalism is anti-family and I can explain more if you like, but I wanted to discuss family and give you examples of how heartless monopolies make life far more difficult than it needs to be. Let's look in on the lives of the hard-working poor. The industrious lower middle class. The question is, is the individual more important or the family? What does individual freedom mean? Does it supersede family authority? Fourth of July on its way with it’s fetishistic flag waving and “American values”, but America was stolen by authoritarian freaks shortly after WW2.    

Seriously ill white men like Hoover, Anslinger Dulles and 

Mccarthy put us on a right wing authoritarian trajectory. They                          advertise you into compliance. Milk does a body good we were told 

as kids and a million commercials of milk being poured into a 

cereal bowl assure our compliance. Manufactured demand as 

    Noam Chomsky says.

        Those in Wisconsin and Vermont who were raised with raw milk 

and raw cheese knew what they were getting. They waved to the cows as they drove to work or very likely milked the cows themselves. Everyone had skin in the game with a family farm, and they knew what they were getting.  

           I remember in the mid 60’s when we drove through Rocky Hill,

 the next town over, and my dad would point out when we drove by

 Valley Crest Farms, “Look, kids, that’s where we get our milk.”  And 

we would

yell out “HI COWS!” But then the big dairies bought the little dairies 

which got bought by Etcmegacorp.  Nearly every local product is now 

made by low wage grunts managed by faceless corporate entities 

beholden to the community of stockholders. The heart of the country 

was transplanted into Big Brother.

Sure farmers could be dumb as fuck and cruel to beat the band, but

 I never said the concept of family has been perfected. What HAS happened is that 3 million people work for walmart insteadof on the farm, and have been so kowtowed by management that many are in a chronic state of chaos as bills pile up, doctor visits are not affordable and the car is totaled and whose gonna watch the kids Friday? Yet the Walmart family has somehow accumulated over a hundred billion dollars due in large part to the industriousness of the American worker. Immigrants looking for a good

 life. Walmart is anti-family no matter how many bible guides they stock, or flags they sell.

 Bootlick America has been brainwashed into thinking unions are 

bad, but unions are what brought us out of third world working conditions, creating, as you know, the biggest middle class the world has ever known. Which is what we want, right? No rich with far more than

 they need and no poor wanting for more than subsistence. Not a living wage, a thriving wage. A tribal wage and a return to the mom and pop system of yesteryear.

Strong individuals create strong families who seek consensus not conflict.  The Bill of Rights is there to back you up. Strong families unite

to create dynamic communities.  Where there’s life, there’s love. When we love each other, we help each other. With family, we become part of something bigger and when we die we become part of something bigger than that.

                                    Comadre.

I’ve been using compadre as an alternative to dude and hey man 

and guys and missy sissy and maw. It wasn’t until today I realized 

that your woman friends and acquaintances are comadres not compadres.  Can't help doing it after being conditioned by American culture. Our whole lives has been a continual growth cycle shedding (we thought) embedded racism and sexism. 

 To me, the Ms. Designation that came along in the 70's gave an alternative to women taking a mans name, such a chattely thing, like the dude owns you or something. Patriarchy is being dismantled whether you realize it or not, but the 

problem is that Capitalism just keeps on a-rollin’, worse than ever.

We’ll read about a dramatic increase in women representatives in November and you’ll hear “just grab ‘em by the mid-terms” as the repudiation of the GOP’s agenda that includes, “rape is gods will” and 

“just grab em by the short hairs if you’re famous,”  finally arrives. 

 Bitter and lifeless is their epithet.

“Love is all we can take with us and we all love all eventually.” 

There is more to us than our brains. That radio is a hunk of metal 

and plastic but picks up and receives messages for many miles. The human brain is vastly more intricate so that’s why I lean towards a slight hope that we do live in spirit. Unless you’re an evil Republican, then God will personally vaporize your soul so your ornery journey ends.

 Those that can love have a radio beacon to 

others that love, and it doesn’t matter if your flesh prison is human 

or hippopotamus, if you can love, you can become immortal. Be part of the family of god.