vonnia's Open Salon Blog

One Life Fits Nobody Perfectly

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:08:07 -0400

You and I are not qualified to determine the value of anyone else’s life or death.

What that means is:

You don’t know whether anybody else is suffering so much that it would be a mercy for them to die.

You don’t know whether it would be wrong for someone to die and leave five kids behind.

You do not know which life requires superhuman intervention, and which life is at the end of its allotted time.

You don’t know!

I know you think you do. You think that you know because you work so very hard to imagine yourself in someone else’s place. You think you know how you’d feel if you were in the same place.

You can’t know!

It is not possible for you to know how you’d feel, what you’d think, what you’d want, what you’d do or what you wouldn’t do.

In the first place, you don’t know yourself or the workings of the universe well enough to accurately predict how you would react if you were faced with any situation outside your own previous experience. You could only guess. And since you couldn’t actually *know*, you’d have to base your guesses on the opinions of others, books, movies, discussions, a lifetime of your own imaginings combined with the reports of other people’s opinions, guesses, and a very few examples of other people’s experiences.

In the second place, if you were suddenly plunked down in someone else’s life, you couldn’t know what you’d do because you wouldn’t be yourself anymore, would you? Why, you wouldn’t even have the benefit of *their* life experiences.

We are flying completely blind when we presume to know what’s best for anyone but ourselves. And, frankly, if you’re honest, you have to admit that you have occasionally been very wrong about what was best for you.

Once you’ve gotten this far in your assessment of your qualifications to act as an omniscient judge for anyone else’s life, you’re going to come up against something that you may not have ever considered before: Are you able to accurately prophesy the future of everyone and everything in the universe?

Not even ascended masters and reincarnated gods/saviours have the foresight to infallibly prophesy the future, so why would you think you have that ability?

Even Christians, those who study the life of He Who was (alleged to be) the incarnation of the omnipotent and omniscient Creator, will tell you that Jesus couldn’t predict the future!

Look at any book of collected wisdom, any book of religion or philosophy, and it will tell you some variation of the following:

Lean not to your own understanding

There is a way which seems right to a man but…

To thine *own* self be true

Yep, that’s two from the Bible and one from Will Shakespeare. You can search high and low, every minute of your life, and you will not find anything spoken or written that suggests any individual human knows everything. We don’t. We can’t. Believe it or not, there’s too much to know, and we are one in our spirits – not in our brains nor in our minds. We cannot know anyone’s experience but our own.

We can make genuinely well-intentioned guesses. But those are mere stumbles in the hazy mirror of our own minds.

You do not KNOW that it’s *time* for grandpa to “go be with Jesus.”

You do not KNOW that baby’s life will not be “worth living.”

You do not KNOW that killing a million Iraqis, Germans, Jews or Romans will make the world a safer place for humans.

You do not KNOW that removing all humans from earth will make it a better place for earthworms.

And finally, the one that wrenches my heart, and possibly yours too. Not one of us can actually know when it’s time for any one of us to die. How much less can any one of us know when it’s time for someone, on whose love we depend, to move on to another plane of existence?

Over ten year ago I knew a man who had fought valiantly for years against the heart disease that caused him such limitation and suffering. He reached the point in his life where he decided that he wanted to lay down his battle armour, and go someplace where he didn’t have to struggle daily to be the husband, the father and the grandfather.

I remember telling his granddaughter, “But you mustn’t allow him to give up. You must explain to him.”

Dear God, was I ever so callous, so unfeeling, so ignorant? Yes, I was.

Fortunately, his wife, his daughter, and his three granddaughters loved him enough to respect his wishes. They contacted hospice and he suffered as little as pharmaceuticals make possible. They cared for him, at home, in ways that I had not imagined.

When his groin turned black because his kidneys had shut down, they fought on for his comfort, as he fought to let go of all that he had had here on this planet.

Thanks to the love, the care, the sacrifices of those five women, thanks to their respect for his wishes, he was able to leave the body that he had come to view as an insurmountable stumbling block to his continued life with them.

As we sat around the table after his funeral, toasting him with bottles of Guinness, (his favorite) everyone told a story about GrandDan. A memory would be shared – and we’d lift our bottles in his honor. When I went last, I told of studying up on the Rape of Nanking, because GrandDan had been there. I expressed my gratitude for him risking his young life to free the oppressed captives. I’d only known him a few years, but I knew his life had counted for a lot in this world.

One of GrandDan’s great grandsons was born profoundly disabled. At age six he weighed 13 pounds. When he died, not that many years later, nobody had any way of knowing if he considered his life to have been worth living or well lived. But his smile, below his bright red hair, could light up all the Christmas trees in the world. And when he didn’t like something, there was no way to pretend you didn’t know what Stephen wanted! I was around him enough to see that his life too had counted for a lot in the world.

We just don’t KNOW what’s right for anyone else. But, I promise you, that to deny any human the opportunity to stay or to go is not love. It’s not honoring their unique place in this world, even if we can’t see clearly what their place is. Stephen had the right to stay here as long as he wanted. GrandDan had the right to leave when he wanted to go.

For any of us to hold onto another human, or push another human away, when it goes against their wishes, is foul, irresponsible, disrespectful, and the ultimate in greed and selfishness.

If there’s a universal perfect time for any of us to be born, to live, or to die, we humans have no way of determining the precise timing. I am not condoning suicide or assisted suicide, that’s another topic for another day. But, when universe has provided a path for another human to come, to go, or to stay, not a single one of us, no matter our professional expertise or good intentions, has any right to interfere.

By clutching tightly, by holding on for (our own) dear life, we deny one of God’s creations their eternal right to LIVE, whether here on earth with us, or in the eternal paradise of their belief and choosing.

Not every creature is afraid to die. Not every creature is afraid to live. Ask. Just ask.

Then listen for the answer.

Holy Copulation of Quantum Physics

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:08:31 -0400

The message in this video resonates with me. I got the link to it in one of the comments here. I recommend Les Visible’s blogs. Links to them are in his sidebar.

If you aren’t thinking about these things, start now. The unexamined life isn’t worth suiciding over, but it’s a far cry from the beauty, truth, love and peace that universe has waited billions of years for us to reclaim.

I won’t go into my rant about the evils of today’s science, how it has been co-opted and turned into just another fundamentalist religion. I will say this:

As long as what’s passing for science today is a predominantly male area, we are going to see the continuation of all the sicknesses on this planet that we see today.

Consider the (male dominated) institutions of science, war and commerce. Think of the (male dominated) institutions of religion, government and law. These few institutions, top heavy with male control, are but the tip of an iceberg of delusion which has raised itself above humanity for thousands of years.

The delusion of hierarchical control structures is only a delusion, not a universal law of inevitable functioning. It’s simply a lie that men and women have told each other for so long that we’ve forgotten it has no basis in reality.

The time is ripe to break the chains of global delusion. Only when we restore the balance of our eternal natures, only when we resume our responsibilities as co-creators of our lives, can all creatures on earth live in harmony with the universe which awaits our return.

Sisters, WE are the missing link. Yes, the revolution is that simple.

Prayer Warriors-An Update For You

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 15:08:23 -0400

To all those who have been praying for RicTresa's friend, Steve, I offer this beginning of prayer. I beg you, brothers and sisters, do not neglect to pray in the Spirit as you are led, and practice binding and loosing. We aren't wrestling against flesh and blood, as you well know. Thank you all for your faithfulness and obedience.

Father, in Jesus' name we bind all the enemy's work and workers away from every part of Steve's body, mind and soul. Please make every component of Steve's being line up with Your Word.

We know the source of all harmony and right functioning in the universe, it is You. We know the source of all opposition to Steve's being in disharmony with universe, it is the enemy.

We declare that Steve's body, mind and soul are no longer capable of receiving any false messages of disharmony of function because Your Son's blood covers every aspect of Steve's being, making impossible the standing of any former strongholds against Steve.

We ask that you reduce Steve's need for medication so that he may function as your free child and serve You, and participate fully in the healing that You are doing in his mind and body.

We ask that all outside mechanical functions be no longer needed by Steve's body, and that all persons involved in his care recognize this new reality of his being, and make the necessary adjustments so that nothing may hinder his continued healing.

Set Steve free from all limitations which lie outside your perfect will for him. We ask that you cause all medical interventions to work only for Steve's good. We ask that you bend to Your will all medical interventions which would not work for Steve's good.

We ask that You send your Comforter to Steve's mental and emotional operations so that he may use the precious physical resources You've provided him for the healing of his being.

Father, we bind all medication and treatment side effects which do not contribute to Steve's healing and line up with Your perfect will. We ask that that You make everything which affects Steve's mind and body come under Your authority and work together for his good.

We wrestle, Father, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. No works of the enemy may stand against your children; we thank you for making it so.

We are mindful, Father, that you have given your humans free will with which they may pursue their individual aims. We know that when we exercise our own free will against your will we violate the workings of universe and become out of harmony with all that would work for our good, and thereby stand invisible and unheard.

We understand that when we ask you to violate the free will of any human we are not standing in your authority. We know that only You have the power to see what is ultimately best for us. Therefore we seek only that Your will be the frequency at which Steve's being functions. We ask you to bind all other imaginings and workings so that they may not have any effect on Steve's being.

We will fearfully and prayerfully lean not to our own understanding, but strive at all times to bind that which is not of You, and loose only that which is of your perfect will. We will diligently seek the path for ourselves and those for whom we pray which will lead us only to You. We ask you to give us knowledge so that we may not perish.

We will give no place in our lives to anything which does not further the perfect functioning of universe. We recognize that to do otherwise is to practice the unbalancing acts of delusion which seem good to us, but violate the perfect harmony which You have made possible for all creation.

We bind all reliance on our knowledge alone, and we loose that which we cannot see in our own understanding, but over which only You have power and authority.

We seek no will but Yours to be done. Our faith in you is the only evidence of what we need for our perfect life functioning. Your power and glory is the only substance of that for which we hope.

Raise Steve up to stand with us, renew him, refresh him, bind up his wounds, and fill him with renewed strength. Arm him, cover his feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, be his shield and buckler and give him eternal victory. Nothing can separate Steve from Your love, and we ask that You remind him of this strongly.

I praise Your holy name and stand ready for Your merciful and loving will to manifest in Steve's life, and in the lives all those who stand with me in prayer for him.

I ask You for these things in the name of Jesus, and I thank You that these things are already done by You out of Your love and mercy for me.

Please Join in Prayer for RicTresa's Friend, Steve

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 04:08:26 -0400

To all Believers at OS,

I beg you to stand with me in agreement that no foul working of the enemy will be allowed to stand against Steve's body.

Thank you for your obedience,

Father God, we ask You, in Jesus name, to bind this infection, and any future infection, away from Steve's body.

We ask You to cover Steve with the blood of Jesus and see him as the innocent child we claim him to be. If he is not already Your child, please make him so now, so that he may fully know You, Your love, Your mercy, Your healing.

Please, Father, cover all those who come in contact with Steve, and all material objects which come in contact with Steve, with the blood of Jesus so that, according to your promise, all things will work together for Steve's good.

I don't know if Steve has claimed Your mercy on his life, Father. But I'm claiming it for him, and all believers who read this prayer will stand with me in making that claim. We agree, with the authority You have given us, that Steve is Your child, he stands in Your mercy, and he petitions You through us.

We are your intercessors, Father. You have promised us that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man will availeth much. We are doing the job You set us to do. We are obeying You and You are not a man that You should lie. You will hear our prayers and You will keep Your Word. We know this.

We have claimed Steve as our brother. We have claimed the blood of Your Son as his protection. We have bound on earth the lies and other works of the enemy. We have loosed on earth the power of Your Son's stripes to heal Steve. We ask that You keep Your Word by binding and loosing in heaven that which we have bound and loosed on earth. We thank You that You have already done this.

We, Your appointed intercessors, ask that You send workers into the field of Steve's life here on earth that he may receive the laying on of hands and the annointing with oil, even as he receives the annointing of Your Holy Spirit.

We ask that You cause all Your intercessors here on earth, when they pray in Your Spirit, will be praying for Your Will to be done in Steve's life.

We further ask that You will send Your Comforter to all those who have loved Steve and been touched by his life, as well as sending It to Steve.

We cannot know in our own understanding what Your perfect will is for Steve. But we do know that You will him saved and healed. Please, Father, show Steve that he is saved and healed. Please show those who love him that he is saved and healed.

All power and glory is only Yours, Father. Please pour out Your power and glory onto Steve. Please move so mightily in Steve's life that even the unbeliever will see Your love for all Your creatures.

We praise You, father. We seek only Your love and mercy for all Your creatures. We ask You to make Steve's life a vessel for Your love. We ask You to have mercy on us as we stumble in our attempts at obedience to Your calling.

Please, give Steve favor with men and women. Cause all those people and things who can have an effect on him to feel Your love for him, and to express Your love for him in their every action.

I'm begging You, Father. We're begging You, Father. We will allow ourselves to be used as Your intercessors. We will allow our prayers to line up with Your perfect will for Steve. We will accept Your will and give all glory to You.

I ask You for these things in Jesus Name, Father, and I thank You that these things are already done by You, out of Your love and mercy for me.

Thank you, Jesus.

Steve,

Every single Believer in the world will be praying for you when they pray in the Spirit, even those who've never heard of you. That's a lot of prayer and a lot of love.

Peace, be still,

I send you my love.

Vonni

Un-Bush & Uber-Bush

Tue, 8 Jun 2010 17:06:46 -0400

When I left my first husband…

No, THAT’s not where we’re going, but work with me.

Remember how much you loved your first puppy…then he pooped on your bed…and you had to clean it up? But, were you mature enough to recognize that YOU were the one with the unrealistic expectations…or did you blame your disappointment on the dog? First husbands are sorta like first puppies.

The idea that followed me around for a year after I left my first marriage, with the gut-churning pain of food poisoning, was that this honyock had made a lie out of my entire life. I had BELIEVED his every golden lie. Or, if I hadn’t exactly BELIEVED, I had certainly given him the benefit of the doubt. I had rationalized, turned a blind eye, reassessed my priorities, adjusted my value system to compensate for the tidal waves of cognitive dissonance, developed eye twitches and internalized a rage so towering that for the first year of single-hood I had obsessive thoughts of electronic machines going haywire, exploding and killing my daughter and me. Yeah, I felt betrayed.

Five years later I started going to a therapy group for abused women. Yeah, marriage number two wasn’t so great either. It turns out that DIFFERENT is NOT the same thing as BETTER. Write that down if you’ve never heard it before. We’ll be using that idea later.

In addition to the group therapy, I also went to a private therapist. The greatest help from all the therapy turned out to be the day the therapist handed me some print-outs and asked me to take them home and read them, to see if they sounded like anyone I knew. They were about sociopaths.

Nope, they didn’t ring any bells. Not then anyway.

The thing about therapy is that we kind of expect instant results and that’s probably not what we’re going to get. Therapy may not pay off for a long time. We may not “get it” for a long time. Years. Maybe five. Maybe ten. If we work real hard at feeling not responsible for ourselves and our lives, we may never “get it.” We may keep on trashing our lives, and the lives of everyone around us.

Or, if we get miserable enough, we may have an epiphany…or a string of epiphanies. But, we CAN change our dysfunctional ways, eventually, maybe not before we’ve destroyed another generation or two. But seeds of sanity and reason will eventually send up sprouts, then buds, and, if we live long enough, if we keep even the tiniest door open in our minds, we may someday see a seed turn into a full grown plant with tasty fruit on it. At which point, we become wise old farts passing down great wisdom to our great-grandchildren.

*long deep sigh*

So, what does that have to do with “The Un-Bush”? And who is “The Uber-Bush”?

Don’t play coy with me! You know full well that Obama is the Un-Bush. Let’s count the ways Obama is NOT Bush.

He’s not white. He’s half-white.

He’s not “old.” He’s a Baby Boomer (born between 1946 and 1964.)

He’s not a Republican. He’s a Democrat (the other “official” American political party.)

He’s not a war-monger. He’s a war-prolonger.

He’s not in bed with business. He bails out business.

He’s not a cowboy in the Old West. He’s a dude in the Old West.

He’s not a power-grabber. He’s a Czar appointer.

He’s not a torturer. He ignores torture.

He’s not a vote overrider. He ignores voters.

He’s not indifferent to health care. He controls health care.

He’s not an outsourcer. He’s an influxer.

Let’s stop listing now. I think the list is long enough for us to be able to determine that Obama is, indeed, NOT Bush.

Obama is the Un-Bush.

Obama is DIFFERENT from Bush.

Obama is NOT BETTER than Bush. Obama is a CHANGE from Bush. America hoped for eight years to CHANGE Bush to something DIFFERENT, and they’ve done so.

Now, go find that piece of paper where you wrote down “DIFFERENT is not the same thing as BETTER.”

You see, sometimes we humans can suffer from something so much that we begin to think, “THIS thing needs to be CHANGed to a DIFFERENT thing!”

It’s a common mistake that we’ve all made at least once. We usually make that particular mistake a number of times in our lives before we figure out that it is NOT CHANGE that we need. It requires a certain number of failures before we finally figure out that CHANGE is not the operative word in improving our lives.

The word we need to focus on is IMPROVE or BETTER. We don’t just want something bad CHANGEd. Anything bad can be CHANGEd for something WORSE. Anything bad can be CHANGEd to something of the SAME quality, BUT DIFFERENT. It was never our intention to change Bush into something simply DIFFERENT. We wanted him changed into something BETTER.

But, when the Pied Piper of CHANGE came along and began playing his tune about CHANGE, we forgot to use our thinking skills. We liked the word CHANGE. We liked the upbeat, hopeful tune of his music. We liked all the ways he SAID he was DIFFERENT from Bush.

Eventually we focused on his repeated chorus of CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE, and forgot everything we knew about how real life works. We liked the fairy tale tune he played for us, and we began to believe him when he said that CHANGE equaled HOPE. We HOPEd he was right. And we voted for him. And he became our CHANGE.

Now we resent him. Just like we resented the cute, wiggly, little puppy who pooped on our bed. Just like I resented my first husband. No matter how many people hand us print-outs about sociopaths, or psychopaths, or fascists, or wolves in sheep’s clothing, we refuse to see that we were not really children following the Pied Piper’s tune. We were not ignorant. We were not helpless.

We don’t want to feel like we participated fully in our own beguilement. We don’t want to feel like doofusses who were easy to fool. We don’t like to think that we got flim-flammed. We don’t want to put ourselves on the same “level” as the uneducated citizens of a banana republic who voted in a corporate-backed puppet of a dictator.

We don’t want to think that our lives were so bad, so oppressive, so frightening, that we suspended all we knew about the world, and suckered for the oldest political lie in the history of politics – that ANY CHANGE MUST be an IMPROVEment.

We were looking for the Un-Bush; what we got was the Uber-Bush.

We made a mistake. We don’t need more time to think about it. We don’t need to give Uber-Bush more time to morph into Un-Bush. He’s already the Un-Bush! He has already given us all the CHANGE we asked for, because that’s all we asked of him: that he be DIFFERENT.

So, what can we do?

The first step is to recognize that we made a mistake. The most important thing to do is the second step: We must completely forgive ourselves for making a political mistake. We aren’t the first country to make a political mistake. We won’t be the last. We must start right now planning how we will avoid making the same mistake in 2012. Remember that DIFFERENT is NOT BETTER!

The Republicans gave us Bush. The Democrats gave us Uber-Bush.

Please don’t try to drag Obama and 300+ million Americans into couples therapy. It won’t work. Bushes and Obamas (like sociopaths) have no reason to change. Politicians (like sociopaths) never have a reason to change. They (like sociopaths) can always find someone (or a group) who will accept them just they way they are, so they have no reason to change to please you. They can just go get jobs as well-paid corporate officers, and wield all the power they need in that arena.

Yes, it will be painful for you, but you want your life IMPROVEd. They (like sociopaths) will thrive wherever they are because there are always more inexperienced people to adore them. If you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, feel free to ask a therapist who specializes in couples therapy. Politicians and ex-spouses do just fine with fresh inexperienced partners. You just go on and make a BETTER choice next time.

There are over 300 million disgruntled citizens in America alone who will be right by your side as you begin to make the CHANGEs necessary to IMPROVE life for yourself. We all want IMPROVEd lives.

Just don’t forget that it was the reigning political parties in YOUR country who dragged you down into your present misery. CHANGE your political parties to IMPROVEd, BETTER, DIFFERENT political parties.

Or you could CHANGE your political parties to no political parties at all. Some people experience a failed marriage (or three) and choose not to ever get married again. You could choose not to have any particular political affiliation, couldn’t you?

After all, there is a reason the first few days of a newly elected leader’s first term in office are called “the honeymoon.”