What Is Myth?

Myth is a corruption of truth.

Simply, lies that we believe which give us comfort from reality.

Need it put more plainly?

Myth is fairytales we believe are true.

With the added benefit that our fairytale is true and everyone else’s fairytale is a lie.

Myth is a large umbrella that shelters many a human belief.

Under the umbrella of myth, you will find, yes, all the religions of the world.

Both past and present.

But you will also find under that shelter of self-delusion prejudice.

You will find racism, entitlement, apartheid, segregation, urban legend, intellectualism, science deniers, liberals, conservatives, family, and friends all seeking shelter under the umbrella of myth.

You will even find yourself.

The umbrella of myth is a human invention.

It was not given to us mystically.

We created it for a specific reason.

Fear.

Fear of the unknown.

Myth gives us a reason why bad things happen.

Myth tries to remove the random nature of the universe.

Our greatest fear is death.

Consequently, the greatest story we ever made up to tell ourselves are those stories about life after death.

Those stories give us comfort from the inevitable termination of our existence.

If we believe in them, we get a coupon to “live after we die for free.”

It’s obvious why we created such stories.

Fear is the motivation behind all myths.

An example is the fear of the stranger, which motivates racism.

The endless storytelling occurs worldwide and in our homes, businesses, and places of worship.

Those people are not like us; they don’t believe like we do, we’re better.

There is a common theme underlying all the fear that shelters under the umbrella of myth.

That common theme is self.

Selfishness.

I am good, everyone else is bad, I deserve everything I want, I don’t care who I harm to get what belongs to me.

Selfishness.

Selfishness shelters under the belief that it is good to sacrifice the lives and well-being of the other to keep intact the myth.

At all costs.

The sacrifice of family, friends, happiness, but most of all truth, truth is the first and most important thing to destroy to maintain our personal delusions.

Fear will always be with us.

There is only one power in this universe that has the ability to overcome it.

Love.

Love lifts the chokehold of fear so we can see the world as it is and not through our personal expectations.

Love will allow you to see the need in the world, hear the cry for peace, and feel the urgency of now.

Love makes clear that today is the day we do right, not after we’re dead.

Love is the only power that can drive back the night terrors of fear and allows us to live together as we should, not as we imagine.

Peace

DFrey aka Toby

Impossible

Steve Martin said once that it was impossible to put a Cadillac up your nose.

There are impossibilities.

You can't build a stairway to the moon.

There is no way to stop time.

I will never be an Olympic athlete.

Impossibilities are limits.

Limits define the extent of expectations.

Humanity has and continues to impose limits on itself.

What it believes to be impossible.

We can't provide housing for free.

We can't educate those people.

We can't feed you unless you work for it.

We can't provide for your safety because that would limit our access to guns.

The Constitution can't be changed.

You are not equal to me.

Those people are lazy.

I'm a winner you're a loser.

A good portion of humanity believes that the world is set in stone.

Or it should be.

Belief in the power of the impossible means shelter from reality for too many of us.

If equal rights are impossible, why even try?

If the 2nd Amendment can't be changed, just shut up and bury the dead.

If a President won't sign a bill, why would we want to talk about that?

Belief in the impossible allows the shallow-minded evil of low expectations and high personal interest to hide behind a straw man.

It is the foundation of nihilism.

Nihilism rejects the value of your life and mine.

It is the Bible from which the sociopath preaches.

Incidentally, that's a bit of irony because the nihilist rejects all religious and moral principles.

From its conception, the idea of nihilism was created as an intellectual canard.

It is a dull instrument used to smash the ties that bind humanity together.

Like a plow forced into the solid ground of society, it turns over the soil of compassion and destroys trust.

Nihilism is the acid that is thrown onto hope.

Nihilism is the friend of the tyrant.

That tyrant is only limited by their access to power.

Not all of us know a dictator personally, but we do have a relative or friend who believes in the impossible.

Isn't there always someone who says that's impossible, why would you bother, don't waste your time, you can't do that?

Why do these people in our lives want to set a limit on the possible?

Who are they?

What is it they want?

They want you and me to live in fear.

They are your brother and sister, your friend, your parent, your relative, your pastor, priest, Rabi, police, congressman, senator, President.

Fear is used by tyrants to manage expectations.

Fear is used to keep the possible from happening.

There are a lot of people selling fear these days, isn't there?

There are a lot of people throwing a rope around expectations and trying to pull it back in.

Trying to keep things from changing.

They can feel the world tipping up onto its side and all the pieces on the chessboard of life falling out of place.

They the tyrant, the nihilist, those that believe in the impossible don't like the world we who believe in the impossible are working to make a reality.

They don't want to share a lunch counter with a person with brown skin.

They don't want to buy a cake from a Gay baker.

They don't want strangers coming to their country.

They don't want you to have a home and a hot meal.

Their god told them that the world was only for them and not for all of us.

We're upsetting the apple cart.

We need to sit down because we're rocking the boat of expectations.

Some of these people are so angry they will kill us because of our belief in the possible.

Their belief in fear is that deep.

Their oneness with hate knows no limit.

Can the ocean keep from rushing to the shore, it's just impossible.

Can you keep justice for all from falling down upon our nation, it's just impossible.

Can you stop the brotherhood of man from filling our hearts with hope, it's just impossible.

That sound you hear in our country that echos down that street where a guy is being beat.

That sound you hear when voices shout for the re-establishment of our democracy.

That sound you hear as feet march for our human right to exist free from fear.

We are the ones to take up the challenge to make the impossible possible.

Don't say no say yes I can.

Do right.

Peace

DFrey

Grounded

Our President is a boil on humanities neck, but he's not the only one.

As the world becomes smaller as information, both real and false can be had in an instant.

The veil that was the American dream has been lifted.

It is not a pretty picture.

Like the reveal of Dorian Gray's portrait, all of the hatred, the crime, the bigotry, the injustice has left us with a gruesome portrayal of what America has been hiding from.

Through our own personal experience, all of us, no matter where we come from, try to put our best face forward.

Even though we may have a load in our pants most of us most of the time want to be perceived as good people.

However, if we were perfect, how come there is fraud?

Racism?

Rape?

Child molestation?

Murder?

Somebody is committing these crimes against humanity.

The lifting of the veil that had previously covered the American way of life is only the most recent curtain-raising by history.

This underbelly of our society has been there since before the Pilgrims landed.

This is a significant point to understand.

We all like to believe in a good story.

There are many good stories at the heart of any society.

The core story that founded this nation in 1776 was that man is free.

He has all ways been free.

Anyone including any organization which includes governments and religions who try to abridge that natural order, this inalienable right, is a tyrant.

They that oppose this Natural Freedom are tyrants.

Broadly defining, it is called the tyranny of men.

These people, these organizations are not a friend of humanity who oppose freedom.

Yet even though there have been those who hate others freedom and will burn and kill to prevent those freedoms, these people are also a part of the fabric of humanity.

The treads of humanity are made of many threads.

Most are common.

Some shine brilliantly.

While sadly, many are dull.

And some threads are just plain evil.

But all of them are part of the quilt of humanity.

Our nation was founded upon an idea of freedom, remember?

A bold proposition, given the history of the world.

Could a people reconcile the social and ideological war that has been going on between those who believe in freedom and those that do not?

All of the previous institutions of the world, no matter the people or the region, did not believe wholly in the innate freedom of man.

The power of institutions of governments of religions is to control, to segregate.

Freedom is only given with the price of membership and only to those within the power structure of the organization.

The American experiment is to determine if enough people could overcome their story, their myth, and embrace the concept of freedom for all.

Could all the threads come together and form a nation?

Could they drop their racism?

Could they drop their segregation?

Could they drop their story?

Could they drop their hate?

And pick up hope?

From the inception of that proposition of freedom for all, and including to this very hour, American and Americans have been at odds with their history and traditions.

And for those that have been at odds, those that feed and prosper from the old beliefs of segregation, division, hate and racism they have been looking for their personal savior to come and destroy their enemies and set them up as Kings of the Earth.

Their prayers were answered when the Trump ascended to the Presidency.

Those racists knew a great day had arrived.

This President would usher in a new world.

This President and his followers believe they are the beginning of a new American brand of Apartheid.

Make no mistake about it the fear of the future of America by many Americans is genuine.

They see the demographic shift, and they are terrified.

Like dogs under the table being fed scraps of meat, people like the current President nurture the fear that white people are doomed as a race.

Don't start nothing won't be nothing.

Right now right today we are at the bookend of the story started by European greed.

If the Aristocracy of Europe didn't want to lose their White identity, they should have stayed home.

It's ironic, and I understand very few actually get irony but here goes…

It's ironic because the European Aristocracy believed that the White race was dominant.

Their arrogance allowed them to freely explore the world and claim it as theirs with little regard for the peoples they found along the way.

Those tens of millions of more people…

It turns out that numbers wise, population, that whites are a racial minority.

Fact.

It's also been perplexing to me how a minority got control of a majority, and that majority didn't conclusively tell this minority to go sit down and stop rocking the boat.

But that's a digression.

Another discussion.

Back to the boil on our necks.

This President feeds a false narrative that many Americans believe so that he can shield himself from personal inspection as he gains financial wealth.

He's not a patriot.

He's not there for the majority.

He's there for a minority.

He's in office for the one.

Himself.

It's getting to be really, really obvious.

The only way to get rid of a boil is with a lance.

The actual substance of the argument must be pierced.

And in our case, the lance of truth must pierce the prejudice of tyranny.

The veil has been lifted, and our way is clear to see.

We must be grounded in the knowledge that freedom and justice are for all.

We're going to try and save as much of the quilt of America as we can.

But that lance can be used for more than lancing old boils.

It can be used as a needle to sew new bright threads of compassion, truth, and honor into the fabric of our nation.

Do not suffer fools.

Drop hate and pick up hope.

Shine the light of truth before freedoms door.

Peace.

DFrey

Baby Teeth

The world is growing up.

Living has a way of creating a set of expectations.

When you are a child, you think you will have your teeth forever.

Then one day one of them comes loose and soon they are all falling out.

Your expectation did not match Reality.

Most of us believe in the stories told by those in authority over us individually in our early years our parents, our caretakers tell us.

These stories we naturally believe to be true.

Why would our parents lie to us?

An example is someday you will have a job.

Most of us get some level of education, and from there, we make choices and pursue a career.

Life sometimes throws us a curve ball, and instead of a career with a 9 to 5 job, we get an hourly wage at a fast food joint.

When, we were told we would grow up to have a career, and we dreamed what that career would be the difference between Reality and our dream can be strikingly different can it not?

Right now, you and I are living in a time of change.

We are witness to what I'm calling a clash of expectations.

Each of us expected our lives and the world to work one way only to be confronted with something very different.

That difference is Reality.

This clash of expectations today occurs because we for the first time in history can have the truth as well as lies delivered into our hands and into our minds instantly.

Steve Jobs wanted to put the power of the computer into everyone's hands.

He saw it as a way of incorporating, of blending together, of merging the human race in a specific manner to embrace the harmony of humanity through knowledge.

He helped usher in the communication age.

People like Buckminster Fuller saw that the desktop computer was going to be the most revolutionary power to pull all aspects of humanity onto a critical path of knowledge.

For the very first time in human history, humanity would be able to know information instantly.

Unfiltered.

Joseph Campbell, on the other hand, saw a canyon opening up in humanity's future.

As Arthur C. Clarke put it, humanity was coming to its own childhood's end.

It was going to lose its baby teeth.

Campbell rightly witnessed the end of humanity's transitional traditions.

When I was a child, I thought like a child, and when I became an adult, I thought as an adult.

Childish things are to be put away when we become adults.

Campbell saw that the world over had lost those cultural traditions which told the child previously that now you are no longer a child, now you are an adult.

Our modern society…

As the adult, you are responsible for the common good of the whole.

Children conversely are only concerned with their own happiness, their own welfare, and are selfish.

Previously in the West, this time of transition from childhood to adulthood was called the age of responsibility.

When a person reached the age of eight or thereabouts, the child was recognized by the adults in the community as being able to understand the difference between right and wrong.

Being aware of that difference meant they could be held responsible for their actions not only for themselves but for the community.

They realized Joe was old enough to trust that he could take the cows down to the river for a drink and not leave them there to go off and play.

Responsibility…

The individual left behind their childhood and took on the role of the adult to support and defend the common good.

Our modern society has allowed that tenant of humanity, what it means to be a human and an adult to drift away, much like Wilson the soccer ball did in the film Castaway.

Today we allow 40-year-old grown children to act out in public precisely as if they were toddlers.

Somehow collectively, we are afraid to tell these adults to put away their toys, clean up their rooms, and behave like an adult.

There is obviously a whole host of issues that these childish expectations from these immature adults can come into conflict with Reality.

I deserve a trophy!

I will marry Prince Charming!

I will have the perfect career!

I'm always right, you're always wrong!

You can't make me!

I'm winning you're not!

I'm better than you!

It's mine!

Children.

Children.

The Child/Adult can resist growing and being responsible for more than just their selfish interests well into their 80's.

However, one day, they will have to face Reality.

The truth.

We only get one chance at life, and sitting at the children's table living as a petulant child tyrant is a sad existence.

A sad existence for the child and the parents.

In America today, we find many people who we have previously elected to Office that demonstrate that they are still children.

These representatives of ours whine, they stomp their feet, they cry out, these Senators are throwing a tantrum because they refuse to do the chore that they were sent to elected Office to do.

Their expectations of power and prestige as a member of a representational government has come into conflict with the Reality of which is more critical their self-interests or the Constitution?

They resent that they must serve the Constitution and not solely themselves.

The Constitution which is written for We the people, not I the indulged child/adult.

At the head of our government currently sits a particular kind of a spoiled brat.

Indulged throughout his life, never told he was wrong by those that served his father, he believes himself to be his own law, his own justice, his own judge.

He has an expectation that his world cannot be challenged.

It's time that the adults in the room introduce this child President to Reality.

It's time to give him a time out.

Peace

DFrey

More Than A Feeling

America has a problem, and it appears to be us.

One step forward, two steps back.

That's right.

One step forward, two steps back.

The problem that America has did not arrive with the election of the current President.

No.

There has been a sickness at the center of the American heart that we, as a people, have ignored generation after generation.

Just like our physical health, the mental health of America is not what it can be.

There is obviously something broken in our will.

There is obviously something overheated in our choices.

There is obviously something falling apart at the center of our idea of Justice, of fairness, of the common good.

At least half of the population of our nation live in a world without hope.

I don't mean they can't live day by day but to tell you the truth that's just what I mean.

If all you are doing each day is just getting by, just living, lust living because you have lost hope for your future, you are living in a purgatory.

You are working hard each day but getting nowhere.

You feel your head slipping under the surface of the waters of life.

You are choking on the words of promises not kept by those entrusted with your vote.

On the other hand…

The condition of America's mental health is not held solely contingent upon the actions of others, we the people are also responsible for letting our conscious get distorted.

Loss of income, loss of job opportunities are a part of life.

They always have been.

Life ain't easy then you die…

There have been places and times in the past where economic opportunity failed the people of the world and created a fertile ground in which political opportunists and tyrants ransacked and destroyed nations.

They plunged their populations into wars, blaming others for their own financial and moral circumstance.

It's easy to say the devil made me do it, then it is to take personal responsibility for your own failing.

Your own demons.

Yet here in America we the people have always understood that the good of the many is extended to the few and to the one.

Our great American experiment is about a nation of many living together through thick and thin.

That our strength is we leave no one behind.

The rich, the poor, the healthy, the sick, the old, the young and all the colors of humanity working together to make a better nation, a better world, a better life for each other.

So here we are at this time and this place in America.

The times they are a changing yet again.

Today instantly, people can unite or divide over a single Tweet.

Words matter.

Words can make people swallow hate or words can lift them out of fear and give them hope.

Each of us has that responsibility to the nation and to each other.

We need to give each other hope.

What can hope be?

Hope can be if you become sick you can't lose your home.

Hope can come from not being afraid your child will be killed in their classroom.

Hope can be working hard and earning a living to pay your bills with a little extra left in your pocket.

Hope can be coming out of the shadows of racism, misogyny, sexual bias, and contributing without fear of economic and social retribution.

Hope can be an educational safety net that if your career opportunities change your new education is free.

None of these ideas to bring hope are new.

No, they are not.

They have been there since the foundations of this Republic.

We the People of the United States, in Order, to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

All that means is we believe that hope belongs to everyone.

The more Justice, the more peace, the more security, the more universal good, the blessing of love and hope will be had by this generation and the generations to come.

Who doesn't want that?

Who would work against that?

Those that profit that feeds off of fear that's who.

Fear is power, and for those who either want control or want to retain it fear is the thing that is fed.

Fear can do a lot.

It can build walls.

It can start wars.

It can starve people.

It can stop dreams.

It can destroy compassion.

It can throw down honor.

It can drown duty.

Fear is the enemy of hope.

More than a feeling, hope is the foundation of America.

After all this time, after all the people who have fought for, died for and have stood for what this nation stands for, we are not the generation to turn its back.

No.

Let us each one of us ask of ourselves and of our neighbors to do better.

Not just for ourselves, but for all those generations yet to come.

Let us each in our way drop hate and lift up hope for all.

Peace

DFrey

Fear

Fear creates false stories.

If you are afraid, you are willing to believe the worse of the thing you are scared of.

It has been going on in the minds of humanity for a very long time.

Entire faiths, entire societies are based upon fear.

Fear of death.

Fear of the stranger.

Fear of new ideas.

Fear of change.

Fear of you.

That's right.

Somebody, somewhere right this very minute is afraid of you.

Of what you represent.

What do you represent?

Are you working for peace between your brother and your sister?

Or do you work against them because you don't trust them?

Or do you fall into the third thing which captures the majority of us which is you do nothing?

Fear will render the most logical person to accept the illogical.

For all of Time, there has arisen out of the emotion of fear a false narrative.

A false story.

A false idea that there is a choice to be made.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

Upon the question of immigration, we are told you must have security first then possibly consideration will be given to why undocumented immigration happens in the first place.

Why can't we do both?

We have adopted an ugly discourse of narrowly believing there is only one way to solve a problem.

We search for a magic silver bullet that we can fire off and finish off the beast.

We want to kill off the thing that makes us worry and work as quickly as possible.

We want a better world without doing any work.

I'll declare that to be a lazy, sluggish way of thinking.

It ignores our reality of life.

Let me put it this way…

When your parent cleaned your bottom, did they do it only once?

Did they say I'll find the best method of cleaning my child's bottom and I'll be done with that!

They cleaned your bottom once and walked away.

They were self-satisfied that they did the job in the best, the most efficient way they knew how and never came back?

No.

Life is about messes and how we do our duty to attend to them.

Messes are renewed on a daily basis.

Your parent didn't have a fear of their duty to love their child.

Your parent saw it as a privilege to care for you.

As it is our privilege to care for each other.

Each of us has an ability no matter how large no matter how small and humble to reach out and care for each other.

We can both walk and talk.

We can both care and have standards.

We can praise and critique.

Fear wants us to believe there is a binary choice between yes and no when, in reality, we all know that the world is gray.

Evil never wants a compromise.

A compromise would mean giving and giving is not what evil is about.

Our duty to each other is never-ending.

Love doesn't stop at the border.

Love doesn't stop at the patient's bedside.

Love doesn't stop at the arrest of a suspect.

Love doesn't stop at the bench before the judge.

Love doesn't stop with the words in our Constitution.

Love asks more.

Love asks you to do all things with a glad heart.

You don't get to choose on the path of love how you can segregate your heart.

The realm of good ideas all has a seat at the table of humanity.

Love demands that we do all of them together.

We do not get to choose.

Love knows we can handle it.

Only fear tells us to choose one.

Life is not like Sophie's Choice.

We are not at the point of a gun to choose the life of one of our children over another.

We do not live in a world of a Paleolithic culture having to decide which child we must sacrifice to the "God's" so that we can have a good crop next year.

Attention!

The world has moved beyond that cultural, mental restriction of child sacrifice.

Human sacrifice for a hollow safety.

Although some who feed fear want to feed that monster continually.

Blood doesn't have to be spilled for us to realize what is the right thing to do.

No.

We can keep both children.

We can keep all the children.

We can keep your children and mine.

Hasn't the world gone through enough to realize that compassion has a huge hug?

We can do both…

It's not difficult.

It's called love.

Peace

Cannibals

Straight up.

The wealthy cannibalize society by hoarding wealth and stealing its dignity.

Through all of recorded time, this has been a fact.

It has never stopped.

It's a fact.

It has never stopped.

Why should it?

The wealthy are a crafty type of parasite for the most part.

They feed off their host to the point of making the host weak.

But the rule for the wealthy is not to bleed the host so much that they die.

In recent centuries the French Revolution is a good point, in fact, demonstrating how the wealthy lost control of their greed.

Centuries of no justice, enslavement, destruction of the common good to enhance the coffers of the wealthy made a lot of ordinary people in France really upset.

So upset that they believed chopping the heads off the wealthy would lead them to a better society.

It got rid of the immediate problem of the local wealthy ignoring the needs of the host they were feeding on, but it wasn't a cure.

Killing is never a cure.

Government sponsored killing, primarily of the non-wealthy, is a part of the cycle of justice put into place by the wealthy so that the larger society never addresses the source of the problems we all face.

People who cannot and will not share.

Some of us may recall the words of the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Or as the wealthy use that same sediment but with a twist, do unto others before they do unto you.

Wealth does a terrible thing to people.

It enhances their character flaws.

If they were a small ass, they would become an enormous ass with a wealth injection.

Sharing is not a trait that we are born with.

It is a fact.

If you are not aware of this, then please look into the current human genome project on how we are all born selfish, Are Babies Born Good by Abigail Tucker, Smithsonian Magazine 2013.

Sharing has to be taught by "caring" people.

Some of us get the lesson while others are naturally predisposed to be resistant to sharing.

While others still may have had bad parents who never took the time to instruct or demonstrate sharing with others outside your immediate family.

Sharing means to give up some of your resources to help another.

On a hostile planet with a rapidly changing environment, resources to keep you alive are critical.

It's sort of obvious why an inborn trait of not sharing would be a universal fact in all of humanity everywhere.

By not sharing the hoarding of resources to self, it allows the individual to survive and pass on its genes.

However, this biological method of survival is antimatter to a society.

Society is all about cohesion, right?

Sticking together?

The rugged individual who is the self-made man who is always winning, the top dog, the alpha male, the wealthy is the complete opposite of what a community stands for.

Right?

The wealthy tell the poor we are better than you because we won't share.

So in point of fact, the wealthy are the best at being humans who survive to pass on their genes and their inhumanity.

They survive at the expense, the lives that they destroy.

Is there a cure, is there a way to prevent this cannibalism?

There has been a cure right in front of our faces that have been in competition with those that are self-serving.

Love.

Love is the answer.

Love derives from our better angels.

We all have the instinct not to share.

But right there from the very beginning of our lives, a whisper tapped us all on our hearts.

You may or may not have recognized it.

The wealthy shout in our faces to follow their example, to deny each other and our selves to serve them.

Some listen to those callous voices thinking they will be like them one day.

Yet in the quiet spaces of all of our lives, the voice of love asks us to do more.

Love asks not to do one act of love but to do many acts of love at the same time.

Love knows we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Love knows we can share bread with the lost.

We can heal those who cannot pay us back.

We can protect those that cannot defend themselves.

We can lift the hopeless and hold them in our arms till they feel safe.

We can wipe away the tears.

We can do all that any one of us all in just one day and do it again the next.

Love is stronger and more profound than the instinct of the wealthy not to share.

Love is a code that existed in this universe long before the earth did.

Love is a code as elaborate or as simple as those who want to hide from it versus those who want to walk with it.

Love is wealth that never can be taken away.

Peace

Never Done

When we use to own a home, the North side of the house had a problem with peeling paint.

Every summer I had to get the ladder out, scrape the bubbling paint and repaint it.

Each early spring, my father went out to trim the old growth on his fruit trees.

During the previous growing season, the tree would sprout sucker branches which would leach out the strength of the tree and not put that energy into growing fruit.

Some days there never seems to be enough time to complete what we need to do.

That's why there's a tomorrow.

Many tasks take more than one day to accomplish.

Doing a part of the task each day with due diligence will get us to our goal.

In the late 1800s, vitamins were discovered, sort of.

It was realized that some foods made people's health stronger than others, but they didn't know why.

Grand claims were made by health food hucksters of the day that they could cure anything from ingrown toenails to woman's complaint with their mixtures.

People then as now didn't go out of their comfort zone and habits.

It was known that inmates developed a sickness and death from eating just cornbread and nothing else during imprisonment but the authorities didn't know why?

It wasn't until 1912 that Casimir Funk isolated and confirmed the biochemical properties of what he termed Vitamins that the public became aware of their benefits.

It turns out the adage, a man can live on cornbread alone is not valid.

You need a whole range of vitamins to live a healthy life.

Eating cornbread only and water will lead to a gruesome death.

However, knowledge of the right things to eat didn't flip a switch in people's diet.

Society abhors change.

People, on the whole, don't like to expend energy, do they?

For many, there has to be a crisis before they take action.

The house has to be actually on fire before they think about taking the stacked newspapers out.

People have energy at the beginning, but for most that enthusiasm dwindles with time.

They plant an herb garden and come back a few months later to see the weeds have taken over.

Our nation needs to tend to its democracy right now.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. admonished us all that the task of equality and justice for all wasn't going to get done in a day.

We each have our part to do.

The forces we fight will not give up.

Evil is not lazy.

Bigotry doesn't take the day off.

Racism feeds upon ignorance every day.

Injustice sprints ahead of the common good.

The weeds of intolerance grow in the fertile soil of anger and hopelessness.

Our challenge is not to succumb to apathy.

Nihilism.

If you've never picked an acre of beans, at the start, the task seems long hot and daunting.

The sun beats you down and stings your eyes.

The fly bites your ankles and the blood flows.

You take a break, but that nagging feeling grows telling you to get up and get it done.

While you're working, a friend stops by and lends a hand.

The neighbor next door sees you working and brings you a drink of cold water.

That neighbor joins in, then the guy across the way brings a sandwich and helps with the picking too.

A community has come together of brother's and sisters, young and old, rich and poor all joining hands and hearts to share in the work.

To share in the riches.

To share in the love.

To share the burden of the task.

A human thing.

We will get there together, all of us one day.

Love has always been stronger than hate.

Always and in all ways.

Peace.

DFrey

Without Our Permission

Change happens without our permission.

That's a fact of this Universe.

The Universe does not wait for our approval.

You can have an opinion about it, but it doesn't change the facts.

Can you stop the tide from rolling in?

Can you stop your child from growing?

Can you stop the sun from setting?

No, you can't.

I can't either.

Nobody can.

Change is the fundamental nature of life.

We are born, we live a life, and then we die.

Each step along that path, we find the world changes around us as we change.

Some of the changes are welcome.

The look of your child as they master riding a bike.

Watching your daughter's face as she marries the person she loves.

That new job you've worked so long and hard for.

Suddenly is gone.

Gone.

Some changes are not welcome.

Your dog is ill and needs to be put down.

There's no work in your town anymore.

The McRib will no longer be sold.

The biggest unwanted change…

The death of a loved one.

Today, March 24th, 2018 in the streets of America and around the world, a collective shout demanding change was issued.

A choice, a demand that life be preserved versus the right to kill.

Why do we reserve the right to kill in this nation?

Could it be the lagging cancer on our soul of racism?

Fear of the other?

Fear of the stranger?

A new voice was raised today to join the old chorus of the past.

It's beat, it's melody unfamiliar to the ears of an older generation, yet, at its heart, it's driving beat as familiar as that old gospel sung by other marchers for freedom from tyranny.

Change comes without our permission.

You can be part of the solution, or you can step aside.

A better world, free of the fear of gun violence has always been in our hands to make real.

The eyes of a nation have been lifted up by the spirit of their children.

March for our lives.

Peace

DFrey

Lift Them Up

Walking into my favorite coffee spot the other day, the hostess Josseline looked tired. 

"How are you today, Josseline," I asked?

She smiled, "No one ever asks how I'm doing. Thank you."

Lift them up.

Some girls were out in front of the grocery store the other day selling Girl Scout cookies. 

They had their learned lines down asking each person as they went by to please purchase their cookies. 

Many did.

An old woman walked by. 

They asked her if she would buy some of their delicious cookies. 

She said she liked to, but she didn't have extra money. 

One of the girls handed her a box for free.

Lift them up.

This coming Saturday, March 24th, from 10 AM to 2 PM starting at Pershing Square, 582 South Olive Street, Los Angeles, CA,

March For Our Lives is holding a rally and a march.

Everyone is welcome, not just students and teachers affected by the rule of the gun in our land.

Wait!

Listen...?

Did you hear that…?

Do you hear it?

People, a nation, a time when voices filled with fear call out collectively for justice.

A sound heard through the long halls history foretells of a building wave. 

A wave built upon the broken and shattered lives cut short by the tyranny of a few men over the many.

Lift them up.

Why can't some people hear other people crying?

Why can't some people see the suffering people not like them

Why do some people turn their backs when they can help stop injustice?

Fear of change clouds the eye.

Fear of change darkens the heart.

Fear of change binds the hands.

Fear of the stranger resists compassion.

Lift them up.

You can read the writing on the wall.

You can see the summer change to fall and then to winter. 

You can see the tide roll in and out. 

You can witness the sunrise in the East and set in the West.

But can you see the despair in others, not like yourself?

Can you feel what it is like to live in fear of death?

Can we as a people ask everyone to be responsible? 

Everyone.

Is that too much to ask for? 

Is that a bridge too far? 

A shore too distant? 

Are we collectively going to fall into a trap set by profiteers of death?

The profiteers who stoke the fears of the unknown. 

Who whisper horrible intent of races not your own. 

Who raised up Jesus yet tell us that even the man of peace would have a conceal-carry under his robe.

That if everyone carried a gun, we would all be safe?

I tell you that's a lie.

It is a lie made by dark-hearted men to make a profit out of the fearful.

To tell you the truth…

I can tell you there will never be a time in your whole life that you will you ever be safe.

Never.

That is the reality.

The story that many believe is if you live a good life, worship the right god, live in the right neighborhood, drive the right car, marry the right person, go to the right school, get the good job, mind your own business, mow your lawn, keep your house painted, donate to charity, care for your family, that somehow through all these things you will be kept safe by an invisible spirit.

You will not be given anything you cannot bear…

That's a story.

It is not reality.

There are some storms we cannot bear…

Bad things happen to everyone. 

You can't stop it.

But you can with compassion do the thing that we all can recognize is the right thing to do.

You can reach out and take a hand that reaches for help.

You can reach out and hold that person who is afraid.

You can lift them up.

Stand with us on March 24th everywhere in our nation.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Most of all, for life.

Peace

DFrey

Charlottesville, Virginia

illustration by Daniel J. Frey

Peace

DFrey

Again Begin

Did you know I'm an artist?

I drew before I could write and I still draw down onto paper my observations, visions…

I draw upon my life and experience.

Being an asthmatic child and adult.

Of dying when I was seventeen.

I forgot my family and had to be reintroduced to them and the world.

Of being an orderly tending the sick, applying CPR on over 114 people, of caring for the dead.

Finding love, of losing it and finding it again, of the gift of a beautiful son and daughter…

To that end and a new beginning, I have begun a monthly extended graphic novel around the central drive of my life to help make the world better.

To point to an open door where our better angels wait for us all.

Again Begin is a journey to the central problem in the world the human race.

It has been a story I've worked on for the past 40 years.

Personal disasters, failures aside, I have turned over this story many times as I lay myself to sleep each night.

In light of the times, in the light of dim direction, plainly no light at all going on in some heads we give the title leader, I will bring to revelation this tale of science fiction wrapped around an ancient parable to stir our genetic memory.

A new myth…

Thank you, Joseph Campbell.

Below is a page exclusive to this website from issue number one of Again Begin available through all the outlets of ebooks as well as a printed version at Amazon.com

Peace

DFrey

Man In Black

I’ve been asked why I always wear black. Here’s the answer…

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,

Why you never see bright colors on my back,

And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.

Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,

Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,

I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,

But is there because he's a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,

Or listened to the words that Jesus said,

About the road to happiness through love and charity,

Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.

Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose,

In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes,

But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back,

Up front there ought 'a be a Man In Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,

For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,

I wear the black in mournin' for the lives that could have been,

Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,

Believen' that the Lord was on their side,

I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,

Believen' that we all were on their side.

Well, there's things that never will be right I know,

And things need changin' everywhere you go,

But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,

You'll never see me wear a suit of white.

Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,

And tell the world that everything's OK,

But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,

'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black.

–      Johnny Cash

Can’t say it any better.

DFrey

Peace