My encounters with the 'rich young man'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aEIqmbFffU

A series of wonderful revelations were sparked yesterday and the day before by two encounters I had with someone I've never met up until day before yesterday. 

I had heard from a few passersby over the last week that there was a march against fracking planned for yesterday here in DC.  The day before yesterday a mid-fortyish woman who was here for that march happened by the Canadian Embassy, saw the signs that I have, both of which say, ‘Till enough are seen dying for it, CO2 won’t stop.’  The signs stopped her and she chose to engage in a conversation with me that lasted probably 20 min. or so. 

She'd come down from Northeast Pennsylvania, as she described it.   She was struck to the heart it seem by what the signs said – ‘Till enough are seen dying for it, CO2 won’t stop.’ Two or three times during our conversation her own memories came into her mind of what's happening in Pennsylvania due to the fracking, and she cried.  Very strong emotions. 

It was with such gladness that she saw what my signs said, what I was doing, why I was doing what I do.  Deep gladness; joy; appreciation; gratitude; relief.  We spoke about the strategy of it, the psychology of it, the science of it.   Deep joy and gratitude on her part for what she was hearing and seeing. 

That is, until she steered the conversation toward, ‘well, Loving, what should I do?.   Very open, eager, sincere, receptive she was.  And within 5 min. the conversation pretty abruptly ended, from that question of hers.  Because what I was doing, the view of the world that I was following, was brought close to her in her life in those last 5 min. and she backed away from it as someone would back away from a blast furnace. 

It was painful for me. I was reminded of it when she passed by early yesterday morning; and I mistakenly guessed she was again going to stop to chat. [Laughter.]  She wasn’t rude.  She wasn't mean, but oh boy, she was not going to stop to chat.  ‘Oh no, I have to get, I have to move on and see what's happening,’ she motioned in the direction to suggest that that's where groups might be gathering.  Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t.

This was not a cowardly woman by societal standards.

But shortly thereafter the Scripture, the story of Jesus and ‘the rich young man,’ ‘the rich young ruler,’ came crowding into my mind.  I've had so many examples, so many encounters with the rich young man, but this one was just so graphic. Nice woman! But that final five minutes of our dialogue, of my sharing, brought close to her and her life a view of what stopping fracking would cost, and she undoubtedly thinks that intellectually she saw deep flaws in what I was saying, but clearly that's not the case - that wouldn’t evoke an emotional response; that wouldn’t evoke an avoidance response.  No.  What she felt was, ‘I don't want to go there!’  ‘No! No!  Pay everything?!?’ None of which I had outlined; I didn't talk, I was explicit, ‘Ma’am, I don't know what you should do.  But I can tell you what I've, what I've calculated it is going to take.’ 

And she saw, I guess, the implications for her life was, ‘you mean I don't get to pick and choose what days I come to demonstrate? I don't get to pick and choose how much of my life I dedicate against the most powerful army ever to be on the planet, going after $20 to $80 trillion in revenue? I thereby lose control, I lose my status quo?!?!?!’   

It was, it was a hand pulling away from a pot of boiling water. 

I’ve written of this parable, I spoken of it, I’ve thought of it.  It's come to my mind, but never so deeply as now.   

Jesus only had hope for the one in 1 million that valued nothing as much as all of creation; nothing as much as all of humanity; possibly as Abraham did in the story about how Abraham was even willing to sacrifice his son for the Creator.  I'd rather think it was - sacrifice his relationship with his son; for all of creation; for the creator, for all of humanity; for the future of his son; for his son’s Soul.

Jesus, Life, Love, is only available to those for whom nothing, no thing, is as valuable to them as all of creation, all of humanity, and possibly the Loving of all creation and all humanity.  By that I mean to focus on the 1 in a million – that Life is available only to those that Love that is in that one in 1 million person; that that person is in total solidarity with all of creation, and all of humanity – that person is unconditional love; is unconditional Life.  That’s what Life is about.  That’s what Love is about.  That’s what Jesus Is about. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.

When I think of the promising souls that I've been privileged to encounter, sometimes it can occur so far into the relationship, but so far it's always, to everyone’s surprise, theirs and mine, the rich young man. ‘I can't disappoint my parents,’ ‘I spent so much on my education that has to be fulfilled;’ ‘can't be abnormal in society;’ ‘I'll alienate people on the left, can’t do that;’ ‘I can't leave my sons;’  ‘I need to do x, y or z kind of work;’ ‘I'm married, my spouse doesn't want to go that direction.’

And whether or not those are worthy considerations, they are not what Gandhi referred to – ‘I will admit just one tyrant in my life, the still small voice within.’  These ‘reasons’ are not the still small voice within.  They are not conscience; they are not the Father that Jesus spoke of; conscience, heart, soul.  They’re at best, one level removed.  Could they be the dictates of conscience?  Conceptually, yes.  But not in the promising souls that I've seen.  No; profoundly unlikely.  It was not conscience, it was that which keeps one from ultimate servitude to conscience, to heart and soul in solidarity, to creation, to all of humanity, to unconditional love; to servitude to Life.

Is there anyone that is not the rich young man?

I think not. 

I think they are no longer on earth, or we’d have seen them by now. 

I think my father’s generation was the last.

Tired of foresight? Vote GOP! Cheney: McCain Made 'Mistake' Picking Sarah Palin

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Unviolent Warfare is 98 Pct Unverbal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KAbGVV4MVw 

Unviolent warriors, unviolent warfare is 98% unverbal, nonverbal; it has to be because of the psychology involved. 

Unviolent warfare fights for a new and radically different status quo - women having the right to vote, civil rights, no more slavery, Mubarak gone…. This, succeeding, is a total paradigm shift.  It’s a shift that is visual, visual in the sense that it is a shift in the way of ‘seeing’ the world and undoubtedly, although this is cognitive not of the retina, the circuits of the brain involved are of the visual cortex. 

It was seeing thousands in Tahri square, joyfully giving everything, including their lives, that cause the global paradigm shift, the global shift in status quo.  It was seeing the 30 freedom riders, it was seeing the prior flight of freedom riders being so brutalized but not retreating, it was seeing 200 women in prison on hunger strike and being force-fed, that caused the instantaneous shift in the mental status quo. 

Words, decades of advocating set the stage for this, helped create the fertile ground.  But the shift did not happen in the speech center, or in the part of the brain that deals with speech.  It happened in the visual cortex or close there to.  It was a shift in how to ‘see’ the world caused by the introduction of living models - Example.

And it was through the vicarious learning that occurred by looking at people in whom the shift had obviously taken place, wow, wow, ‘be the change you wish to see in the world.’  Be one of the new paradigm, of the new worldview, of the new status quo, that you might be the evidence thereof, that you might be the catalysts for the shift by others.  Be the model, as a house might be the model in a new housing development to help prospective ‘buyers’ visualize.   

Be that which can be vicariously learned from and do not dilute that visual opportunity with words or with too much words.  Supplement with words, explain with words, narrate with words….

But massive paradigm shift, mass shift into our hearts is not a verbal exercise.  It requires opportunity for visual, vicarious learning by seeing others that have already made the shift and would rather die than shift back.

Jesus too saw naught but sub-humans. If Loving is harsh, Jesus and Gandhi were harsher

http://youtu.be/HSsSiFXuOzg

So, the most compassionate of medical doctors gains entrance to North Korea where it is known that virtually the entire population is kept on starvation diet from birth to keep them compliant and docile.  “Oh, my God, they are sub-humans,” she says through tears upon looking at the crowds.

Yesterday I happened by accident across a video log-log shot some time ago by me at a time when flooding into my mind was the idea that we were devolved into all humanoids, sub humans, like a childhood movie I saw, a sci-fi horror flick, where a little boy, one by one, saw the adults in his life emerge with tiny probes at the base of their skulls, that had been implanted by alien invaders.   Logs yesterday and today speak of the ‘rich young man’ and my encounter with the rich young man most recently day before yesterday and yesterday.  This morning all that flooded into my mind in yet another way.

Jesus saw the same thing as I - a world of humanoids, a world of sub humans, a world of walking dead people, a world of walking Dead people, of his brothers and sisters all, taken over by a what he might've referred to as Satan, Deadness of Heart toward all Creation and all of Humanity, Satan being the other that was not his Father, the Creator of all, Universal Love, the father of all, but that had been rejected by all but the one in 1 million, hmmm, as I as a Father have been rejected.  Hmmmm.   

There were between three and 400 hits on this humanoid video log of mine shot a year ago. I was surprised - that's 20-30 times more hits than generally my logs get.  

It struck me at the time of that log that obviously it was such a harsh view of the world, how uniquely harsh, uniquely horrible, and of course that anyone seeing it would revile it, and me, for speaking such a ‘horrible’ thing. 

And as I was walking this morning from the borrowed latrine, ‘this is exactly what Jesus saw.’  This is exactly what He spoke, and it is exactly the one in 1 million non-humanoid, non-devolved, non-sub-human that He lived and died for, and He, if He ever thought there would be a mass awakening, He never spoke of it.  ‘The way is narrow, few will enter in.’  ‘The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.’

If it's me, Loving, that so harsh folks, it’s Jesus too.  It’s Gandhi by implication, because his deep depression at the end of his life, his sense of total failure, was to say he saw his beloved country not of live people but of Dead people; his beloved India.  His life had provoked, and conditions had helped provoke what looked like a major awakening of life, but at best he saw at last it was a brief movement toward life, which quickly receded when the status quo of death became tolerable again. 

Wow.  It isn’t must me, folks.

nd 'Why are the Olympics reminding me of Hunger Games?'

nd 'Why are the Olympics reminding me of Hunger Games?'

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Before they headed back to the locker room, though, they took a quick left and headed straight for Michelle Obama - the wife of President Barack Obama, who greeted the full U.S. athletic delegation on Friday - who was seated in the front row to take ...

nd 'I accept what I need; never what I greed.' Loving

nd 'I accept what I need; never what I greed.' Loving

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The Status Quo Changes only when it Changes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReoKGbVK6p0

Well sort of, I can just barely see beyond the chicken and egg aspect of this.   But I can see a little bit beyond.

The status quo is what we are.  Whatever age we are, our life up until that point has been finding our place in the way things are.  We’re an information system; we’re a computer system, that’s what our nervous system is, and it has hardware, it has firmware, it has software, and whoever you are at this instant in time you are that many years and seconds of your life in programming a way to be.  Some of its now in hardware, that's pretty difficult to change.  Some of it is in software that's integrated with that hardware; that's difficult to change.  And a little piece of it is easy to change, not much of it is easy to change. 

So any and every status quo, any threat to the status quo, confronts you or anyone, with the prospect of throwing out your way of being, your way of existing, your way of living, your way of having pleasure, your way of maybe finding joy; probably not joy, so rare in our lives in this society.

I only glimpsed this morning this piece of it - that status quo is a paradigm, or it's like a paradigm - the capacity of our mind to make sense of reality a certain way.  Sometimes that’s shown to us with pictures – have you ever seen the one that is the old woman and the young woman; and when someone's first shown it, they’ll see either the old woman or the young woman; but over time, minutes, tens of minutes, particularly with coaching they can switch between views of the same picture without touching it, without moving it.  It’s a capacity of the mind, it snaps things into place.  It may not be the only snapping that's possible. 

Well a fundamental change in the status quo such as, ‘of course women should have the right to vote,’  has that snapping aspect to it.  It's not only what happens externally, it’s what happens within us.  And when it happens that quickly, it's not painful, but the prospect of it to the nervous system is excruciating, such that all but one 1 million run from it, and even kill to prevent it.

So the status quo doesn't change until the status quo changes.  30 kids are getting on a bus to their expected death, the freedom rides to Mississippi, their nervous systems already snapped into the new status quo. They saw and were living that they became of a different status quo.  ‘No, we don't sit in a separate waiting room.’  But their being it, their living it snapped ultimately millions of onlookers into the new status quo, and the status quo changed for millions almost instantly. Revolutionaries in Tahrir square provoked the same response within days.  The status quo for the whole world switched in days from, ‘yes, Mubarak heads the country,’ to ‘No, Mubarak can't head the country anymore.’  The status quo doesn't change until the status quo changes.

And when the status quo changes there is an, ‘ahhhhh, thank goodness,’ among millions who instants before that paradigm being shifted for them, would kill to prevent it from shifting. 

So there's something to those that cause that paradigm shift.  They go right to the brink of death, by giving every thing they have, not almost everything, everything they have for life in the status quo to be replaced, possibly including their own lives, that it causes enough onlookers to vicariously go to the same place, the same threshold of willingness to give.  And by standing at that threshold, without knowing it, there is the possibility of them getting instantaneously and painlessly and joyfully sucked through.  It's a hacking past the defenses of conservatism; it's so breathtaking, the courage of those 30 freedom riders, the courage of those 200 women in prison for women’s suffrage, that it literally sucks the healthier of those onlookers breathlessly to the brink, to the vortex, and sometimes they get sucked through, instantaneously.  ‘Oh, I see the young woman now; it isn't just the old woman, the mature woman in that picture.’

If the next 200 billion children will have a future other than hell on earth, a handful of people will go to that vortex themselves, and thereby create the conditions for that breathless, vicarious following, by much larger numbers, such that all could instantaneously, joyfully, gratefully and unwittingly get sucked through.  Or it won't happen.

Eagle Scouts stand up to the Boy Scouts of America: *UPD

Eagle Scouts stand up to the Boy Scouts of America: *UPD

'We all are the 'rich young man.' No way in Hell I’m giving everything for the Global Neediest. The problem isn't Loving's Ways

http://youtu.be/qBTOS5BxNQQ

Yes it may be that I'm too harsh.  It may be that I'm too eccentric, too demanding, too different.  Too narrow in my view of what it takes.  That I'm communicating badly, unnecessarily alienating people.  Too philosophical, too harsh.  Communicating inappropriately; no not in a sexual way but in the meaning of ineffective or counterproductive from my generation to younger people, specifically using all caps in some of my writing. 

All of that may be true.  It's my perception that it's not true, that is not correct, it's not accurate. 

What's accurate is, and what has me with a perfect track record so far of losing every promising soul that I've seen is that I do, and by implication call for what no one is willing to do.  The rich young man is unwilling to give everything to the cause.   And thus far we cannot and will not face that to defeat a fossil fuel industry going after $40 trillion in revenue will require some of us giving everything to the cause - our friendships, our comfort, our houses, our wealth, our careers, our futures, our pulse, our lives, our reputation, our alliances on the Left; everything will be taken from us.

NO!  That can't possibly be!!!  It must be the way Loving articulates, the narrowness of his demands, his extremism, his eccentricity, harshness….  No.  No. No. Not by any historical measure.

I can't fully understand this so I'm not sure how I can explain it to anyone else.  How can I have written of, spoken of, thought of, articulated the centrality of the Rich Young Man parable, the Wealthy Ruler,  and feel like I'm only 'getting it' right now?  I don't know.  All I know is, that's how it is.  That parable is the whole deal. The entire deal.

'Yes I want to save the world, but I don't want to offend the people on the left!  Yes I want to save the world, but I don't want to have to devote my entire life to keeping my body in the way!  Yes I want to stop fracking, the folks that are down here in DC today, but I don't want to have to quit my job to do it; I don't want to have to lose all my friends, I don't want to offend my other fellow activists; I don't want everyone in the world to hate me.  I don 't want to devote, to give, literally everything that I have.  I don't want to have to sell my house....'

Probably every promising warrior I've yet encountered.  Duh. That's where they are lost - the rich young man.  I can't give everything that I have.

David Hilfiker, his books are so worth reading.  A modern day Saint, or close thereto, at least for his mid-life work where he left a comfortable practice in a northern Wisconsin town, moving his bio-family to the needier parts of DC to set up clinics, shelters, counseling.  He was involved with Christ House, as I understand it, a marvelous institution here in DC -  medical clinic, longterm care for the incapacitated homeless here in DC.  When I heard him speak 12 years or so ago in the wealthy Philadelphia suburb where I existed at the time, he spoke with authority this scholarly man, how the most written of, explained, over-explained passage in the new testament is the passage about the 'rich young man.'  Century after century of people contorting themselves into answers as to why Jesus certainly did not mean that we all should give everything for the global neediest.  Right? 

We give EVERYTHING that we have, or we do not fight alongside Jesus. 

I expect to speak of this more in a moment, in another log, but the status quo is the status quo.  It can change, but is a paradigm shift when it does.  It's a total shift.  Everything old goes, everything new takes its place.  So everything in the lives of those of the status quo, near all of us, is threatened.  And in that profound sense, everything has to be sold, given up, given, devoted, risked to join the Jesus' of the world, the King's the Gandhi's, the Alice Paul's, the Diane Nash's.  This is where I've lost every hopeful soul I've seen.  With all of them, sooner or later it surfaces to them what they would not, could not, will not give up for the least of these our family. 

And if I ever play a role in helping to win just one Warrior to the cause, it will not be by my joining the all but one in a million liars, or misleaders, or those who are mistaken who say, 'Oh no, this can be easy.  We can stop fracking an easy way.  We can stop the fossil fuel industry, crazy insane after $20-80 trillion in revenue, we can stop them without it costing us everything.’  'You can land on Normandy Beach to defeat Hitler, and it won't cost you everything - you won't have to leave behind mother, father, wife, children, farm, job, career, all safety and comfort.... No, there is an easy way.'  That's a lie.  Fracking isn't going to be stopped without some of us giving everything we have in the world so that the next 200 billion children have a life other than Hell, to the cause.  The fossil fuel industry will not be stopped in their dumping of deadly warming gasses into the atmosphere until some of us are seen for the joy of it, for the love of it giving everything we have for the global neediest - the next 200 billion children, yet to be born. 

And that's the one little thing that so far, 'Oh, of course I want it to stop, I'll do anything!  Except for giving everything, every single last thing I have for the cause.'

Absolutely fascinating.   

Think Obama's a Muslim? Then you're too stupid to vote Los Angeles Times

Think Obama's a Muslim? Then you're too stupid to vote

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But, if you were to show up at the polls in November, and the poll worker were to ask you “Is President Obama a Muslim or a Christian?

In gay marriage fight, some brands take a stand MSN Money

In gay marriage fight, some brands take a stand

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