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Slate has a nice video of New Zealand lawmakers breaking into song after passing their own marriage equality law.

Customs Minister Maurice Williamson promised the sky would not cave in today. ‘‘I give a promise to those people who are opposed to this bill right now… the sun will still rise tomorrow, your teenage daughter will still argue back with you as if she knows everything, your mortgage will not grow, you will not have skin disease or rashes or toads in your bed. So don’t make this into a big deal, this is fantastic for the people if affects but for most of us life will go on.’’

I owe the link to Zachary Firnhaber

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/04/17/new_zealand_gay_marriage_law_passes_supporters_sing_maori_love_song_in_parliament.html

I found this quote in an old notebook of mine. I cannot tell if it is original or if I copied it from somewhere else:

“Wisdom in our day consists not so much in the revelation of some new and unknown secret, as in quieting the trumpets of irrelevant information which are deafening us.”

We can go all the way back to James Madison to witness a founder already afraid that genuine democracy would be an unacceptable threat to the moneyed elite. Madison struggled to provide “safeguards” to democracy that would ensure the masses could never vote on certain things. Some of the limitations were good, others not so good.

With the advent of mass media it became possible to get into the minds of individual citizens and convince them that the values of Hollywood and Wall Street were actually their own. People became accustomed to equate democracy with capitalism. Citizenship was reduced to voting in elections and keeping the economy strong. The strength of the economy was no longer measured by the health and prosperity of the people, it was measured artificially by the elites themselves.

I don’t believe evil rich people meet secretly in hidden groves to scheme how to rob the masses, but I do believe there develops a cultural attitude that assumes the public is immature and irrational and that the upper classes are especially suited to govern them. With such undemocratic attitudes instilled in the masses, conspiracies are unnecessary.  These cultural and political attitudes become the norm simply because it is the rich who own the media and who fund the universities. We literally begin to see the world through their eyes.

As people are “educated” they inherit and internalize the legitimacy of a cultural pecking order. It becomes an unquestioned truth that surrendering responsibility to free markets and trying to solve all our problems through them is perfectly rational and healthy. In the end, “educated” and “successful” people are not even aware of these anti-democratic assumptions, much less do they question them. Like an infant in the children’s seat of a car playing with a toy steering wheel, they become content living in a simulated democracy.

The explosion at the West Fertilizer company in Texas was no accident. It was the inevitable result of anti-regulation policies here in the Lone Star State. Politicians say that businesses have had their hands tied by regulations and need “freedom” from government interference. Usually such objections refer to regulations like rules for worker safety. Consequently, Texas leads the nation in the number construction worker deaths.

Anti-union sentiment in the state also plays into such tragedies. Without the protection of a union, workers learn not to complain about working conditions for fear of losing their jobs. The fertilizer plant that exploded this week had been fined by the EPA in 2006 for not even having a risk management plan. It had not been inspected in five years. The plant was a tragedy waiting to happen. No doubt the owners had insurance and so will recover their losses, but the families of workers will have no such delivery from their grief.

We must stop calling those who die from unsafe working conditions “victims of an accident.”  We must say out loud that were murdered in cold blood by the heartless calculations of rich business owners and the lapdog politicians who serve them. We cannot bring back the dead, but we can cry out on behalf of those who will labor this day in harm’s way.

If you have grown convinced that our democracy has been bought, it is still no reason to despair. You can choose the lesser of evils on election day, you can still lobby for your favorite causes, but you can also do something that is a little revolutionary by supporting cooperative businesses.

Cooperative business are co-owned either by the customers (consumer cooperatives) or by the workers (worker cooperatives). Either way, such businesses are an important step away from the kind of capitalism that leaves customers at the mercy of the market, and workers at the mercy of their employers.

Austin has some wonderful cooperative businesses:

All Austin Cooperative Nursery Schoolhttp://www.allaustincoop.org

Black Star Co-op Pub and Breweryhttp://www.blackstar.coop

Cooperation Texashttp://cooperationtexas.coop/

Dahlia Green Cleaning Serviceshttp://dahlia.coop/

KOOP 91.7 FMhttp://www.koop.org

Monkey Wrench Bookshttp://www.monkeywrenchbooks.org

Red Rabbit Cooperative Bakeryhttp://redrabbitbakery.com

Treasure City Thrifthttp://www.treasurecitythrift.org

Wheatsville Food Co-ophttp://www.wheatsville.coop

In addition to supporting cooperative businesses, it is a bit revolutionary to move your money from a bank to a credit union, which is controlled democratically by it’s members.

For more information here is a directory of Austin cooperatives:

http://www.austincooperatives.coop/

The preacher Thaddeus K. Martin was furious at the Texas Buddha. “How can you say that all religions are true? Jesus said he was only path to salvation. If you are saying there is any other way, you are making Jesus out to be a liar.”

Texas Buddha cupped his hands, “I didn’t say all religions are true. I agree with you that there is only one way. Only universal love will save our world. “

“Did you get that straight from Oprah?” the preacher scowled, “You are just adapting your religion to be accepted by the culture, You are taking the easy path.”

“Not so. Since the beginning of time there have been very few universal lovers of humankind, but there have been countless sectarians each claiming that theirs was the only way. It is they who have chosen the common path.”

The preacher raised his bible, “Jesus said it and he meant it. I repeat, are you saying Jesus was a liar?”

“Fear can ask the question, but it cannot hear the answer. We must not use scripture to reduce the mystery down to our own level of reasoning. We must let it raise us to a level of loving we do not currently understand. When an awakened one says “only me,” he or she is not speaking arrogantly of themselves, but as the one love of which they are a unique expression.  We must not hear their words as if spoken by an ordinary ego.

“When you sat on your mother’s knee, you could not imagine that she had a heart big enough to love each of her children as an only child, but she did. An awakened being speaks as the one heart out which of every creature is born- every butterfly as well as every person. He or she speaks as the one vine of which we are all branches. When Jesus says “only me” he is singing as the beloved. It is like when a man says that his lover is the only woman in the world. A logician cannot hear what is really being said. Only a lover can understand.

“Jesus was singing a love song, not teaching a lesson in math. He was telling us that we cannot love in general. Love is most specific thing in world.”

I was asked by an online friend yesterday why I do not just call myself a “universalist.” It’s a good question. I am often asked by friend and foe alike why I call myself “Presbyterian.” I am so non-traditional, why don’t I become a Unitarian?

I have great respect for the Unitarians, but I think of myself as a Presbyterian Universalist.

“Presbyterian,” for me, represents the particular parts of faith I share with those in my community. We have a particular view of Jesus. We have particular hymns that we love. We have a particular vocabulary of meaning. If I were just a universalist, I would lack the particular vocabulary and rituals to share life intimately in community.

By the same token, if I were just Presbyterian, I would have a bracket around my thinking and my ethics. I could not share this world as fully with non-Christians to whom I owe justice and compassion, too. Love demands that I be bigger than my own sect.

So I want to be both Presbyterian and universalist. I want to live intimately in community, but to consecrate that community to the common good.

But just because I am a pluralist does not make me a relativist. There are very specific virtues required to live for the common good. So there are forms of religion I reject. When someone says there isn’t room for me in their version of Christianity, I think to myself. “And that’s why I don’t want your version of Christianity. In your version, I would have to become like you to be welcome. In my version, there is room for you to be you and for me to be me. Doesn’t that make the larger version twice as good?”

Rorschach Test- A psychological test in which a subject’s interpretations of a series of standard inkblots are analyzed as an indication of personality traits, preoccupations, and conflicts.

We hold our lives together with storylines. When trauma strikes, we try to weave whatever happens into those narratives. If we do not have enough information, our storyline often fills in the details with a made up interpretation. If our theory turn out to be correct, we consider it proof that our entire belief system is valid. If our theory turns out to be false, we usually just forget our earlier guess.

After the bombing in Boston this week, the rush to judgment was truly illuminating. Glen Greenwald collected a few of the theories, some of the comments were made just hours after the tragedy:

‘The betting here is on Middle East terrorists,’ Jim Stewart, CBS News

‘The fact that it was such a powerful bomb in Oklahoma City immediately drew investigators to consider deadly parallels that all have roots in the Middle East,’ John McWethy, ABC

“‘It has every single earmark of the Islamic car-bombers of the Middle East.’ Georgie Anne Geyer,

‘Whatever we are doing to destroy Mideast terrorism, the chief terrorist threat against Americans, has not been working.’ A.M. Rosenthal, NY Times.

Some anti-gun people used the explosions to attack Republicans for preventing gun control. Some pro-gun people saw the attack as demonstrating the vulnerablity of our nation due to liberal gun grabbing. Alex Jones went into his mantra that such events are “false flag” operation used by the Government to steal our rights.

Whoever turns out to have done this deed will be one person, or one group of people. Whoever did this will not represent the Islamic world, nor will they will represent white Christians, nor anarchists, nor liberals nor conservatives. Whoever did this will not not be a character from our storyline at all. The larger group from which they come will not be responsible for their crime.

My prediction is this: when we find out who did this terrible act we will not be finding proof of our own theories about everyone else, we will find that we have been looking at a Rorschach.

A friend invited Texas Buddha to hear Guru Chohan Chhala who claims to channel the ascended masters and to lead his followers to a higher plane of consciousness. TB politely declined.

“I thought you had an open mind,” the friend responded, “Guru Chhala has been known to levitate and perform other miracles.”

“My practice is quite different,” responded Texas Buddha. “I do not seek to levitate. I practice so I can come down to earth.  Life is the only miracle I need.”

“But Guru Chhala has reached the seventh level of enlightenment. Don’t you wish for higher consciousness?”

Texas Buddha slowly shook his head. “Those who seek higher consciousness or esoteric secrets are like foolish kittens climbing a tree. In their giddy pursuit of height they do not realize how far they are removing themselves from their true habitat. They only realize their plight when they cannot get back down to anything that really matters in their everyday lives.”

It is not easy to stay awake. Pictures of our devastated earth injure our hearts. But if we do not stay awake, who will defend our wounded planet?

It is hard to accept the almost certain fact that, even if humanity came to environmental sanity today, we cannot save the earth as we once knew it. Extinct species and exhausted top soils are gone. Soils take thousand of years to replenish. And we will not even know many of the species that have vanished.

It is not easy to do, but looking at the pictures is a way of remembering the importance of staying at our posts and speaking for the animals, for the earth and for our own children of the future.

Thanks to Allison Thompson for the link:

http://www.utexas.edu/know/2013/04/10/headliners-arctic-ice-and-disappearing-languages/