"That black abyss of mystery, out of which all things come and back into which they go"

This was how Jospeh Campbell described Kali, whose name refers both to Black and to time. Kali is derived from the Indo-European root word from which we get the words calender and wheel. It is also the the source of the eldest of known Indo-European goddess names, Kolyo (The Coverer). That we are speaking of the primal Goddess, the very Ground of Being, is obvious. So we can say of the Great and Divine Mother yes, she IS the Black Abyss, and to her we will return when we have finsished acting upon the stage of phenoma and Time...look around you, at this great field in which we seem to be moving, living, and dying. This is the Greatest One - the source of the universe and all being - at play, and you ARE it. Tat Tvam Asi

It is a sobering thought to look around you, watching the birds in the trees, the clouds in the sky, and the grass all around you, and to realize that yes, one day all this will be gone. The Sun will consume it all, then it to will be gone. So it goes witihn the Field of Time.

We have what we seek. It is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.
- Chuang Tzu

From chelidon

The following incredible editorial thanks to kaigou who got it from okaasan59 I'm proud to say the letter came from my local paper, and I'm embarrassed to note that the people the letter-writer was addressing had also published letters in that same paper.

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A Mother's Reflections


"Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people. I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.


My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.

He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be
doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity.

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.

At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?

A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."

You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.

He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.

You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.

How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage. You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.

The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?"

Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that? "

__________________________________________________________


If you believe that homosexuals deserve the same rights as everyone else, repost this, and be thankful that there are people like this mother, because without them, where would we be?

Each decade, dense
fingers rolling crimson seeds
I plead.
In dark cloisters, choked by vile incense,
this silver image reminding me
each wound, too, I must bleed.

In absolution and feverish prayers,
fingers rolling bloody stones
alone.
A dying figure cold and bare.
These mysteries cannot save my world,
For what sin can suffering atone?

Count each decade, dense,
and recognizing selfish need
I scream.
Shattered by this vile pretense,
in saintly stigmata one truth I see:
that which desires to bleed.

My hearts ease, the Autumn wind
washing away the tides of sin.
And I alone under diamond skies,
so restless in the night,
find the strength to shed this skin.
A gentle laugh
An innocent smile
Whispers of a Mistral Wind
enflame my desire to sail these seas
of endless dreams

Where to now, Morgan Le Fey?
Have I become Parcifal lost on his Way?
Or have you exiled me from Avalon's shores?
When, then, Moonlit Queen, do I find it?
Or in the Chapel Perilous do I simply quit?
In the Halls of Annwn my madness breeds sweet release.

"The wheel of the Tarot is the wheel of Dharma," Mama Sutra said softly when he had concluded. "It is also the wheel of the galaxy, which you see as a blind machine. It rolls on, as you say, no matter what we think or do. Knowing that, I can accept Death as another part of the wheel, and I can accept your nonacceptance as another part. I can control neither. I can only repeat my warning, which is not a lie but a fact about the structure of the Wheel: By denying death, you guarantee that you will meet him finally in his most hideous form." - excerpted from 'Illumninatus!'

"Where ravens and crows gather together, the door to the otherworld stands ajar." - Ten for the Devil

The things we touch have no permanence. My master would say: there is nothing we can hold onto in this world. Only by letting go can we truly possess what is real.
- Li Mu Bai

Feel everything
Question everything
Resist nothing
Live like you're dying
Live like you're dreaming
Love like you're dancing
Widen your world

~ Raphael Cushner, "Setting Your Heart on Fire"

"Now cloaked in this milky light, new as the virgin dawn,
shrouded sweetly in all kinds of mystery,
you turn, smile and then are gone.
Tonight flies a better moon."
- Ian Anderson

The August moon is creeping up on us. The afternoons have been scorching and I am thinking with longing about winter. I was never much for summer. My blood's to thick for it. Give me a brisk fall, all gold and red, and a winter to kiss my cheeks rosy, and then I'll be happy as the red bird.

Last week, I took a ride into the countryside north of here. The corn fields brown and crisp by the summer heat, and they look as worn and tired as I have been feeling these past few days. Adieu, John Barleycorn. Sleep well beneath the fields.

Is it really so late in the year already? It seems like the minutes have been slipping by unnoticed and I am loathe to admit such folly. Every moment is a jewel worth attending to, lest it languish unappreciated like James Joyce's Molly Bloom, and you wind up like Leopold, a cuckold to your own lack of attention. Each breath of life, like Molly, is a "Flower of the Mountain", and the very worthy object of deep, drunk desire. You can't buy back the lost moments you've taken for granted. They're forever forgotten, wasted and buried with the corn. Mrs. Bloom said it best. When it comes to life, the answer is always: "Yes, I will. Yes."

"And now I sit here, late at night, and in my mind I hear that voice
You were my Molly Bloom, and for that moment I was James Joyce"
- The Balladeers

The Erl King

"Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?
The father it is, with his infant so dear;
He holdeth the boy tightly clasp'd in his arm,
He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.

"My son, wherefore seek'st thou thy face thus to hide?"
"Look, father, the Erl-King is close by our side!
Dost see not the Erl-King, with crown and with train?"
"My son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain."

"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
Full many a game I will play there with thee;
On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,
My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not hear
The words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?"
"Be calm, dearest child, 'tis thy fancy deceives;
'Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves."

"Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?
My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care.
My daughters by night their glad festival keep,
They'll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not see,
How the Erl-King his daughters has brought here for me?"
"My darling, my darling, I see it aright,
'Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight."

"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy!
And if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ."
"My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
Full sorely the Erl-King has hurt me at last."

The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child;
He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread,
The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead.

-- Goethe

“There is what is formed, and it is impermanent. Form arises, and then it falls back into formlessness. Before form, there is the potential. The potential always is. Always was. Form does. Formlessness is. Reality exist to be percieved.”

"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing."
- Conan the Cimmerian

Would it kill people to mind their own business and be a little nicer? Really, being nice is not that hard, and it feels better than being a nasty cynical bastard all of the time. It seems to me, thick headed and barbaric as I can be, that much of the problem stems from the fact that most people do not consider the consequences of their actions, nor do they have the capacity to pull back and view their environment holistically.

I figure there are certain qualities that are pretty damn important if you want to live harmoniously, like a sense of integrity, politeness, and good cheer. Life's a hell of a lot easier when people like you and you like people.