Building a better Soapbox

Many many years ago, there was a practice of people gathering in the town square to speak to crowds. Anyone could do it. To raise themselves above those who came to hear them, often times speakers would stand on a box of soap; a very strong wooden box. They picked this because it was easy to get one - perhaps even free, and they were strong enough to hold someone on them for a longer period of time.

So, permit me if you will, to stand on my own Soapbox and speak. After all, Blogging is really the New Soapbox.

There is a controversy going on here in Wisconsin. Several years ago The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater had invited a man named Ward Churchill to come to the campus and speak about Native American rights and the problems faced by them. Shortly after September 11th Mr. Churchill wrote a paper and said

"that the terrorists were responding to U.S. atrocities in Iraq throughout
the 1990s, and that many of the victims in the World Trade Center were not
innocent.

Instead, he accused the stock brokers and money managers of being part of
the "mighty engine of profit" that dictates U.S. foreign policy, and he likened
them to Adolf Eichmann and German industrialists who assisted Hitler in his
plans to exterminate Jews from Europe during World War II.

Those comments drew little attention until last week, when objectors used
them to fuel a campaign that led to administrators at Hamilton College in New
York to cancel his scheduled talk on the upstate campus.

-Milwaukee Journal Sentinal - 2/11/2005

I first off want to say that I find his comment are disgust. His comparison is insensitive, uncaring and perhaps even fully wrong. Some good people died on September 11th. The Chancellor of the University, Jack Miller, agrees, calling the comments, "despicable" and "deeply hurtful." I could not agree more.

Here in Milwaukee there are two predominant talk stations. Both have a republican only bend to them. I've heard the comments of some of their 'Personalities' and the outrage they express. They have attempted to whip the people into a frenzy and put pressure on Mr. Miller to not allow Ward Churchill to speak at the campus. They Claim it is because taxpayer money was being used for it. Mr. Miller yesterday agreed the speech could be given, so long as no campus funding was used. Today, they continue to try to keep people in a frenzy. They claim Disgust at his words and that is demeaning the dead.

I feel the outrage goes beyond that of tax money being spent. I think that is a good vehicle for the fervor by which Mr. Charles Skyes and Mr. Jeff Wagner and others on the station to vent their complaint.

I feel their comments are based on a simple fact stated by President Bush in the days following that tragic event. "You are either with us, or you are against us."

These same two people and others on the station have been promoting the return of troops from Iraq and support for the war. The claim that it is all about freedom and that we need to support the president and the troops while the fight for our freedom. These are the same people who promoted a rally held across the street or near by a John Kerry Rally, so that he would hear them complain about him. These are the same people who played the "Scream" of Howard Dean over and over again and made fun of him. And they have a right to do that.

(As an aside. The airwaves are owned by the public and the stations are permitted to use them for the good of the public (in the public trust is the term on the license). These stations do not present any other on-air voices but those who are GOP positive, pro-war and against any Democrat or Democrat idea except for people who call in, and then they are on only so they may be ridiculed for their beliefs. They are not really service the pubic trust, but that's a different blog entry.)

What I find so disgusting about their type of outrage is that it is one sided and anti-Patriotic. If Ward Churchill had made comments like that about Iraq citizens, I would imagine they would be promoting his appearance. If he had said something about citizens who oppose the war not being patriotic, they would promote the speech.

The challenge of Freedom, as I understand it and believe is when it is not easy to defend it. When someone says something so hateful you are repulsed and sickened by it, yet you can defend that persons right to say it, then Freedom as it was expressed by the founders of this country will have been fulfilled.

I abhor every word that any of the KKK utters. Yet, I believe they have a right to speak.

I disagree with most things said by members of the Christian Right. Yet, I believe they have a right to speak.

I would defend the right for both of them to protest, to speak and to be uncensored in public.

We have thousands of very brave soldiers who are doing their job, in what they belief is a fight to keep freedom alive. If that is true, then we need to not have people working to silence those whose' words they oppose. Instead, those same people should be working to let them be heard. Let them speak. Let there be a public forum for their words to be heard and accepted or rejected by each person as they choose to.

After all, Freedom is also about what you choose to accept or reject as true. But that is a very different type of freedom, the freedom of the human being.

Let Mr. Ward speak. Let his viewpoint be heard, however unpopular. Then the blood spilled by those who fought to preserve will not have been done in vain. Otherwise, they are dis-honored.

And now.. My feet touch the ground again...


UPDATE... This just in...

FRIDAY, Feb. 18, 2005, 3:48 p.m.
Resolution seeks to halt Churchill visit

The Assembly will vote Tuesday on a resolution condemning an upcoming speech by controversial professor Ward Churchill, slated for March 1 at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Steve Nass (R-Palmyra), condemns “anti-American” comments made by Churchill and calls on the university to cancel his appearance. Churchill’s talk is titled “Racism Against the American Indian” and is to be part of the school’s Native Pride week.Churchill is a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado and a longtime activist on American Indian issues. An essay he wrote shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, that likened the financiers killed in the World Trade Center to Adolf Eichmann, a key figure in the Nazi’s Jewish extermination machine, has generated national attention and criticism.Interest in the speech is high; according to the university’s Web site, the 400 tickets available for the speech have all been distributed.

----------------------

I am dismayed that now we really have government stepping in to try to limit free speech. Welcome to our own little USSR.

The more things stay the same...

I was on a long drive today, around 400 miles round trip, helping a friend retrieve his car from repossession. So, I had a long time to think and watch the road and nature move past my vehicle.

I noticed new buildings where trees once stood and houses where there were farm fields the last time I drove past. Many many things had changed.

The centerpiece of Buddhist teaching, if I have it correct, is that nothing is permanent. We come we go, things die and things are born, nothing lasts or stays exactly the same. I learned today that the Buddhist Zen Master Seung Sahn, whose' book I was reading a few weeks ago passed away a couple of weeks ago. His existence changed.

Everything around us changes every day. In spring flowers bloom and then they wither away and fertilize the next flowers to come up. People are born or die every day, the hospitals are very busy places in that regard.

I look at my own life and I see how everything is different from day to day. I am able to clearly see how life changes around me. I meet new people and we become friends - or not. I see how the sunsets differently each day. I've noticed what time this takes place in relation to how dark the house is when the lights on timers come on.

The only constant is change.

I've said it before in my life, but never really felt it. Really Feeling it. A very different experience.

Even yesterday, during the Mass that I attended, there was something chanted by the congregation as well as said by the Priest as he smudged ashes on the foreheads of the faithful. "Dust you are, to dust you shall return." impermanence.

Several years ago, when I was really into the Buddhist thing, I backed away because I was actually freaked out about the who impermanence thing. I'm will die, I will be dead, they will burn my body and nothing of me will be left. What a funny thing to be freaked out about. Of course that will happen.

Dan has been drinking one night and decided to take a shortcut through a cemetery. Well, it happened that on this night, Joe, one of the grounds keepers was out in the cemetery putting the finishing touches on a grave that would be used the next morning. In his stupor Dan stumbles into the open grave. He struggles for a bit and then settles in. He rests for a few minutes and has lost his buzz enough to realize his situation. He struggles again to get out and then feels a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, you'll never get out of here." says a voice.

Joe was alone in the grave in a second.

What will I leave the world with? What will you leave the world with? Will we leave it a better place then we found it?

Do you know the old saying, "Everyone makes people happy. Some by arriving, some by leaving."? What if it was "Everyone makes people happy. Some by being born, some by dying."
Kinda stark, agreed? But, in some cases, sadly true. I've know many people who were not upset and actually were relieved when someone passed away. Some one who had made them a victim and caused them great pain. Some would say that this is Bad Karma. In some ways it is, but I think it is truly human nature.

Here is another saying, and thus the title for this post, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." I don't know who said it, but it was very wise. You can apply this to fashion, music, attitudes, literature, movies and more. Some of the very things that were in fashion some 20 years ago are 'hip' to wear now. Some language has returned. Some has departed. Some has stayed the same.

But, sometimes, I like to flip that around and look at it from, "The more things stay the same, the more they change." It's those trees that are gone now and wood frame houses are going up in their place along the freeway. It's the Zen Master who died, but before that found a state of mind, he said, where death was no different than being alive - in good way. It's my life being different and what I do today different than I did not long ago.

Peace

A Packet of Ashes

Today marks the first day of the Christian season of Lent. My view of this has changed over the years.

When I was a young child growing up in a Catholic home, it meant Fish every Friday and being sure you didn't eat meat on certain days. It meant teachers reminding us to designate something we would give up for Lent. Usually it was things like Chocolate or sweets or something like that. Having so little, poor as our family was there was little for me to give up.

This morning, for the first time in many, many years, I went to a Catholic Mass. I had built a cross for a Monistary and School here in town, and I was invited to be present for its' first use.

Most of the Mass was in Spanish, which was very cool since I kind of miss the Latin Mass. I only heard it a few time in my youth, but it was very cool. I sing as part of a Unitarian Choir, and once in a while we sing in Latin which I do love. There is something very noble about Latin.

There was the usual readings for Ash Wednesday with a passage about how we are all dust and to dust we return when we are dead. (Yes, I had the Kansas song, "Dust in the Wind" in my brain.)

During the Sermon, the Priest made mention of the Muslum faith and how they fast from sun up to sun down for a period - he asked how many would want to do that as a show of their faith. He mentioned the way Buddhist monks fast daily, eating only once per day, and only that which is given to them.

These two things were very cool for me to hear since I am have relatives and friends who are Muslum and I am a Buddhist practictioner and occasional meditation teacher.

On the way home I heard a gent on a interview show saying that the current proposed budget from President Bush will - and other sources have said this as well - cut funding for programs that help the poor and disadvantaged, while it retains the tax cuts which the President admits are a direct benefit for the upper class. That this action was not very Christian of him.

I agree. Lent, the Priest at Mass said, is in part about charity, giving to the poor.

Seems Mr. Bush missed Mass.

Part of my reason for wanting to go this morning was because of some healing I needed to do with my view of Catholicism. I hear people often say they are a recovering Catholic, yet, they are not working to heal themselves or recover from the pain that the church inflicted on them. They are running away from it. It is, in my view, much like the alcholic who is not trying to stop drinking, yet proclaims they are a recovering alcholic. (I understand that slips happen, that's just the thing with booze.. cunning, baffeling and powerful!) For myself, if I am going to profess myself as a Recovering Catholic, I need to be doing some healing work.

Building the cross was part of that. I really didn't expect it to be, but it was. See, my mother would often time tell me that when I didn't do something I should be doing, or she told me to do, or I was not able to do such as compex math, that I was "helping build the cross for Jesus." Or I was "nailing Jesus to the cross. "It was, as a Methodist Minister put it to me once, Faith abuse.

Building this symbol that guides some good people to do good works for others helped me to see mylife as not one where I was doing harm to others, but that I can live my life and in small ways do good for others, even if it is not my way to find goodness.

When I left the church, there were several people kneeling, one I could see was directly looking at the Cross. I found it ironic that he was looking with passion at something built by a Pagan.

Yesterday, in my Blog entry, I mentioned when things start, and the questions people ask about when that happens. Sadly, often times this the question is where people do harm.

They bomb womens health clincs or shoot doctors, often claiming they were doing it because 'god commands them to.' I think this is a distortion. This is the human interpertation. It turns it into a struggle for power; who makes the decision on when life starts. There was a line on a Seinfeld show where one of the characters says, "It's not a pizza 'till it comes out of the oven.", and that's very true. Before that, it's just a collection of items.

The Buddhist belief as I understand it, is that we are all stuck on a wheel of living where there is pain and suffering because we keep trying to identify ourselves as seperate. We live, we die, we live, we die, we... well, you get the idea. Until we are able to realize we are no different than anything else. Fully realize that point. That the clouds, the plants, the sun, all are the same as we are, then, we move off this wheel and become part of the universe.

At the exit of the church, there was a basket filled with plastic packets of ashes. Grey, fine dust in clear packages. During the Sermon, we were invited to take with us a packet or two as a reminder of who we are and what we will be. Keep it at your desk or in your home, or spread it someplace where you find it would be helpful to do so, he said.

I took two packets.

You may ask yourself ("Self!" - a little tip of the hat to Emeril.) Why the heck would a Buddhist, Unitarian, ex-Catholic take a packet of dust from a Catholic church?

Like Kansas sang, all we are is Dust in the Wind.

Empty a packet of dust in the wind and where does it go? All around the universe.

Not much different from Buddhist teaching.

Peace

So we start

Everything has a starting point. Sometimes we argue about what that starting point is. Some argue about when life starts (birth/conception). Some argue about how the world started. And then there are those who see life, living and all the universe in a cycle. We live, we die, and then we try again until we get to the next level, or we end our pain and suffering of this level.

Yeah, I'm kinda Buddhist. Would that be Buddhist Lite?

I suppose a good place to start is to tell you about who I am and so on. Well, I'm a 43 year old male, living in Wisconsin, married. Someday I might actually publish a photo of myself, but for know, use your imagination.

I grew up in the innercity of Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin. I've been broke many times and just about ready to live out of my car at least once. But, at the moment, I'm doing OK.

Like many others in the country, sadly, I am unemployed. It has been 3 years under the Bush Economy and I do not see things getting better. I do some 'odd jobs' as they used to call them, but it barely covers the cost of living. Needless to say, I'm not very hopefull about the next 4 years under President Bush, and how our world and our nation will fair.

Believe me, you will read more on that as we go along. I think that a lot of what I put on here will be political.

I read that the new Bush budget will cut a number of programs. Good progams that help people.

I'm one of them. I'm in line for Disability help from the state, but, because of cuts in staffing and budget, I wait in line. It's not that I am expecting or hoping for a hand out, just a hand. Some help to get my life back. See, I have a medical problem, which was one of the reasons I had to leave a job I held for a couple of months, a few months ago. Then medical problems kicked in and I could no longer hold that job. I'm looking for a new direction in life and trying to get in that direction.

The most frustrating thing about job hunting, even in a more industrial area, which is where I am moving to, is how much of a lack of communications there is. You (I) fill out a job application, speak with someone, have what I think is a great conversation and interview. We are engaged, speaking about the same things, looking at work from the same angle, and then...

they never call.

I understand how it is when Women say "He never called me after that." It is a let down.

It's not that I expect much, just a note saying "Thank you, no thank you." would do. I understand they are busy, but it would only take a second.

OK. I'll stop here. I'm sure, if you have read any of this, you have some idea what you are in for.

Have a fantastic day and do something nice for someone today. You'll feel better for it. It could even be as simple as let someone in front of you in line while driving or waiting at the grocery store.