The Deep

What do you see?

What do you know?

What do you believe?

The surface tells you nothing about what takes place below.

When you live on the surface, the tides are out of your control.

When you fight against the current, you know not what you are up against.

The belief in peace can not equal the faith in the war that has gone on for over two thousand years.

The conflict is in the origin of faith they both love.

Who owns exclusive rights to be seated in the place of honor at the table?

The belief, there can only be one.

Deep water.

To those who live deep under the surface, what takes place up top has nothing to do with their reality.

No matter how much the winds of change may blow, the people of the deep are not moved.

They are insulated from critique.

The people on both sides have chained themselves to an ideology that says they are special. They are the chosen. They will rule over their enemies in life and after death.

They are in love with their conflict.

It fills them with purpose.

It feeds their prejudice.

How do you find a compromise between two opposing people who believe the total destruction of their opposition is required so they may live?

The thousands of children on both sides that have died have not moved them.

The destruction of their community on both sides has not moved them.

The thousands upon thousands who have died on both sides are ignored.

Only the surface of the conflict has ever been addressed.

The window dressings, the easily understood issues, the things that can be whined about without touching the elephant at the bottom of the ocean.

Ther thing that continues this conflict that has not been addressed?

The thing there in the deep waters that brings fear to the peacemakers?

Something so profound that if talked about would shake the foundations of society?

That which shall not be named.

God.

Religion and its structure are at the core.

Either one is right, the other wrong, or both sides are wrong depending upon your own belief.

And there's the rub.

The three religions of the West all claim the same spot on earth as their's and their's alone.

There has never within these three groups been any room for compromise.

King of the hill or ruler of nothing.

Like blind fish in the deep, the faithful follow the voices of hate.

There can be no compromise with those that oppose us as being rulers of humanity.

It's written in the holy books of all three faiths.

The problem is now defined, so what do we do?

We send a message of hope.

We let the people of the deep know that life is possible on the land.

It's a different life than what they have known, but it is life.

We must ask them as many times as needed to understand we share this world with them.

The people on the land and the people of the deep can live together.

There can be peace only if those who live in the deep want it as much as those on the land.

DFrey

Peace

Permanent Record

Guilt.

Guilt is a powerful force in human society.

Guilt will build cathedrals.

Guilt will jump from a bridge.

Guilt keeps the innocent under control by the guilty.

This guilt is not because the person the society has committed a crime.

It's not for killing, or stealing, or destroying.

This guilt is used by those who wield it as a hamstring.

A way to stop progress, the emotional and intellectual development of a society and the individual.

It began long ago when the gods and then a god had to be appeased.

You can't want a thing for yourself unless you give up something of equal or greater value.

Simply, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

You can have a birthday, but you can't enjoy it.

You can have a career, but you must sacrifice your love life.

You can have earth but give up heaven.

Hogwash.

We must peel back the layers of guilt to find the origin of species.

This guilt was created by the ruling class, the aristocrats, kings, and queens.

Guilt kept them in power.

The aristocracy of Europe believes themselves to be the children of Jesus.

Direct genetic inheritance.

They are the physical embodiment of God on earth.

There are not many other positions in society where change is more of a threat to their existence.

You can count on that list the current Republican Party.

Change of awareness, of the removal of the blindfold of ignorance, becomes a direct threat.

Guilt is the weapon of the powerful.

You don't want that because you're not good enough to appreciate it.

That dress won't look good on you; you're fat.

You can't handle the truth.

Your vote doesn't count.

You are not a man.

Not worthy.

Guilt is the slow bleed in the side of hope.

The truth that destroys guilt is that there is no either-or.

You can have a good job and a living wage.

You can vote for a government that serves all the people.

You can have love and happiness too.

There is no permanent record.

No file keeper is checking off if you sacrificed sufficiently to get your heart's desire.

Only men and woman who whisper dark thoughts to innocent minds.

Pushing people into the mud so that they can walk on their backs.

Break the cycle of guilt by keeping your eyes on truth.

Truth is a fire, a light against the darkness of ignorance.

It will lead in directions unsuspected.

Truth sets the innocent and the guilty free.

Peace

DFrey

The GOP Today

What controls the modern Republican Party today is hate born of fear.

The hate is directed at anything, anyone who represents change.

This child called hate is not responsible for its own birth.

This hate is not an immaculate conception.

This hate was born of parents called fear and ignorance.

Fear is the name of the mother of the child of hate.

Fear of the other.

Fear of the stranger.

Fear of sharing.

Fear of truth.

Ignorance is the name of the father of the child of hate.

Ignorance of empathy.

Ignorance of justice.

Ignorance of freedom.

Ignorance of truth

Together fear and ignorance met long ago in the human story.

Fear, ignorance, and their child hate have been why we don't have nice things in society.

Fear, ignorance, and their child hate have been the roadblock, the hurdle, the moat, the barbed wire, the wall that has kept society from reaching the promised land.

They have been the crab in the barrel of life that keeps pulling those back who want to escape the cycle of violence from escaping.

Fear and ignorance didn't produce just one child.

Every generation, another abandoned sibling is added to the orphanage.

This generation's child of hate finds its refuge in social media.

There it feeds upon the prejudice with relish and abandon.

Before today the children of hate had to gather in secret, in the woods, with hoods.

Now they take pictures of themselves as they desecrate the house of the people.

Fear finds refuge in the pulpit.

Every Sunday in America, it is taught that God ordained an order to the universe.

In that order, the white man is on top of the pyramid.

Fear is given shelter when it's declared that the mixing of the races is an abomination in God's eyes.

The white race must stay pure and faithful to God's word.

Fear sees the browning of America and the world as the end times.

The time when their savior will return and kill all the enemies of the white man and make him ruler of the earth forever.

They are the chosen people.

Fear finds a play companion with those who hate other religions.

The babysitters of fear like Putin, Trump use the fear of the Islamic religion to incite violence.

To get what they believe is theirs politically, financially.

It's what unites the Republican Party this fear both politically and financially.

The fear that white people and their God will be replaced by brown people and their God.

This child of fear knows it's right when it sees Black Lives Matter marches.

This child of fear knows it's right when it can't make jokes about a person's race anymore.

This child of fear knows it's right when they can't get a job at a living wage.

This fear knows it's doomed when their white savior is not re-elected, President.

Is there a way to stop the hate?

No.

No, there isn't.

The child of hate is not the source of the problem.

The source of the problem that threatens to destroy the American democracy is fear and ignorance.

The parents of the children of hate need to attend a family planning session.

Their fear needs to be listened to.

Fear needs compassion.

Fear needs to feel safe.

Ignorance is the harder of the two parents of fear to help.

Ignorance cannot be told what to do or that it's wrong.

If you do, it will only lash out and destroy anyone, anything that comes to tell it the truth.

Ignorance can only learn through example and consequence.

Love, compassion, and sharing have to be lived and demonstrated as a path to happiness.

Through living a life of love, ignorance will eventually catch on; there is a better way than nihilism and destruction.

It is up to every generation to pick up the torch of freedom and carry on the fight.

Drop hate be love.

Peace.

DFrey

Immune

Walking by a local restaurant, I see people enjoying their immunity. 

Apparently, they are immune not only to the COVID-19 virus.

Our brothers and sisters are immune to society.

Immune to community.

Immune to compassion.

Immune to brotherhood.

Immune to love.

How did these people get their vaccine?

The answer is Blowing In The Wind, written by Bob Dylan.

He asked, how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?

How many years can some people exist before they are allowed to be free?

How many times can a man turn his head and pretend he just doesn't see?

The answer appears to be hate is seeded generation after generation.

By people, humans who believe they are doing good work.

Mothers and fathers.

Brothers and sisters.

Churches, schools, governments, police.

All keep the story alive.

The great white myth.

I'm telling you here and now if you don't know this in your heart of hearts already.

People have been making up stories to keep them from seeing reality since before recorded time.

They have told themselves these stories so many times that these tales are embedded into the human psychology.

In the Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell, "Myth is much more important and true than history."

Human's capacity to believe in their own myth is limitless.

They will believe in ghosts.

In Leprechauns.

Their team will win a sports championship.

The 2nd Amendment can't be amended.

Tom Hanks eats babies.

White people are ordained by God to rule the earth.

The only balance to myth is truth.

Yet truth is harsh, and myth is smooth.

Truth goes against our expectations, and myth feeds our prejudices.

Some of us are lucky to be born able to see the beauty of the world.

While others have turned down that privilege and have focused their sight inward.

They don't want to know about the cannonballs flying.

They don't want to see the man beaten down in the street.

They don't want to hear people cry.

Just as hate is seeded every generation, so too must love be grown in every generation.

Any gardener can tell you it's a continuous battle against the weeds.

We have to tend the garden of truth to keep out the weeds that would choke it out.

If you have hands, lift; if you have ears, listen; if you have a voice, speak up.

If you have a mind, love.

Peace.

DFrey

Labor Costs

American businesses have been indulged in living in a fantasy dream world where labor and material cost nothing…

The root of the belief comes from the story of slavery.

The belief in the relative value of one person.

Business has always fought for a discount.

Slavery eliminated the cost of labor in so much as it did away with paying for a service.

Slavery maximized profit.

Profit is the god of business.

What does it profit a man to own the whole world and lose their soul?

It’s all easy money when you don’t believe souls exist.

The world over has been manipulated, coerced, beaten, killed, cajoled, bribed, marketed to believe what’s right for business is good for the people.

Unfortunately for the sake of the welfare of the people, they have bought what business has sold.

Slavery teaches that some people have more value than others.

Those at the top of the pyramid, the leaders, have more value than those that support them in their position.

The needs of the few, the one, outweigh the needs of the many.

Without me, you wouldn’t survive echo’s down the hallways of the tyranny of man over mankind.

This slavery that has dominated mankind has been at war with the people economically, socially, and morally.

What has every war been about?

The Crusades, The French and American Revolutionary wars, the American Civil war, the First, the Second World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, the Drug War, the Immigration Crisis, civil rights, women’s rights all are about who pays the cost of production.

Or better…

Who profits.

In America today, the Republican Party has purposefully transformed itself from a conservative business party to a white nationalists party.

They’ve seen the future, and they don’t like the idea of sharing the profits.

They believe in the advertising that their white, blonde, blue eyed god, who sanctioned the creation of a white America to dominate the world.

They tell each other this online on social media, at work, at play, and from their pulpits.

They were comfortable in their dream world where all things came to them at no cost.

Yet while their brain, their consciousness was asleep, the body of America took a pill called freedom.

In their sleep, the body of America swallowed a draft of water called justice.

Now some 240 years later, white business Americas have woken up with a belly ache.

They are angry they have been awoken from their slumber.

They are fighting and willing to burn the American ideal of freedom to the ground.

Who dares disturb the rulers of the earth?

All so they can go back to sleep.

All the violence they foment so they can be indulged in not having to pay the price of freedom.

Freedom for all means freedom for all.

If we are to turn the corner on this fight for freedom in this nation, it’s up to all of us to make Americans deal with reality.

The fantasy has to stop.

We no longer can indulge the morally bankrupt children that there are no costs to justice.

Put the coffee on, walk around the room, stretch, rub the sleep of indifference out of your eyes.

A new day is upon us all right quick.

Peace

DFrey

Help Not Wanted

Start with the British Red Coats.

They believed they were the good guys.

The Confederate States believed they were the good guys.

The German and Japanese fascists believed they were the good guys.

The Red Revolution in China believed they were the good guys.

The Klan believes they are the good guys.

Today the Proud Boys, Boogaloo, Q believe they are the good guys.

The Republican Party believes they are the good guys.

Every one of these groups, organizations, clubs has a sign out front.

That sign says, help not wanted.

What does that mean?

To want help, you first must come to realize you need help.

You get a flat tire, there’s no spare, you call AAA to get help.

The storm blows the roof off of your house.

You call your insurance because you need that roof overhead repaired.

You have a toothache.

Do you knock it out of your head like Tom Hanks?

No, you go to a dentist because they have the knowledge on how to help you.

Help not wanted.

Most of us can recognize when we need physical help.

We have a broken bone, a cut, an illness.

But a large group of Americans doesn’t realize they need moral help.

They can’t see the fairy tales of the white hood have become ingrained in their cultural beliefs.

They can’t feel their temperature rise as loud, selfish tyrannical voices command them to obey.

They can’t hear people cry as they deny them the right to exist.

They don’t need any help because their god is on their side.

They know power makes right.

They are defending their race.

They are defending their belief.

This is why they can’t be helped.

Help not wanted.

The only way to change the course of a river is through real effort.

To redirect to control floodwaters, civil engineering takes decades of continuous effort.

To have a civil society takes decades of continuous effort.

The waters of strife, of dissonance, of anger and hate will go where they will.

The rain will fall.

But we are not predestined to drown in a flood of hate.

We can build dams of justice.

We can build bridges of compassion.

We can lift the ideal of the beloved community to be real, not just a hope.

But remember, help not wanted?

Don’t throw your effort, your life into a job where you are not wanted.

Go make the light of peace, of brotherhood.

The lost will come to dry off of their own free will.

Peace

DFrey

Feed The Spirit

Did you feed the cat today?

Did you watch your program?

Did you catch the news?

Did you find that last collectible?

Did you read your book?

Did you water your plants?

Did you meet your friends?

Did you do nothing?

What you feed grows.

Did you run in the park?

Did you walk to the corner?

Did you yell at the people you love?

You hate?

Did you give?

Did you take?

What you feed grows.

What didn’t you do today?

You didn’t listen to your neighbor.

You didn’t talk to the lonely old person.

You didn’t give.

You took.

What you feed grows.

Our lives all run in cycles.

There is a time to learn, to fail, to gain.

A time to be born, a time to die.

And yet, in-between it all, there is a time to live.

And living means growing.

Rocks don’t grow.

Rocks lie there and let the workings of time wear them away until they are no more.

Our spirits are a living thing in each and every one of us.

Each of us is born with a seed of life buried deep in our consciousness.

Through our actions and our actions alone, we are responsible for caring for this precious gift.

We are ultimately responsible for how we respond internally to the world and its inflictions.

It’s up to each of us to care for our spirit.

Do you have a green thumb, or are you dead beat parent to your spirit?

What you feed grows.

The human spirit is unconquerable in the sense that its shell of resolution can not be cracked from outside of it.

The human spirit only can wither from within.

If we lower our expectations.

If we stop caring.

If we stop learning.

If we turn from hope.

If we stop listening to truth.

If we only see ourselves in the world.

Consider this…

If you believe you can’t see the light, you’re just turned in the wrong direction.

What you feed grows.

Turn your eyes upwards, and your spirit will follow.

Peace

DFrey

No Justice No Peace

A universal truth, for every action, there is a reaction.

If there is no reaction, then the action never happened.

You overdraft your bank account.

The bank fines you for your error.

You drive through a stop sign.

The police give you a ticket.

You forgot to buy bread.

You're eating cold cuts with no bread.

For every action, there is a reaction.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

What does that mean?

It means cause and effect.

It means the poor, the minority, the old, the forgotten, the people on the margins who live this universal truth.

When crimes, inhumanity, intolerance, bigotry, racism are poured out on these groups, nothing traditionally happens.

A black man is shot and killed in the street, and seven years later, the officer who shot them is let go.

Nothing happened.

The black man is still dead.

The man who shot him doesn't lose his job; he's moved to another town.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

We have all seen the videos of the insurrection enacted against our capitol, our congress, our senate, and it's employees.

They not only destroyed property through smashing and breaking, but they also filmed their crimes as they ransacked, urinated, and defecated.

They did this in the people's house.

So you're telling me if a group of people broke into your house, smashed up the place, urinated and defecated everywhere, and left a note saying die bitch, you're okay not arresting the culprits?

You're okay with doing nothing?

As if nothing happened…

No.

No justice, no peace.

Bullies do not respond to time outs.

Bullies do not care about your feelings.

Bullies only think about themselves.

Bullies respond only to one thing and one thing only.

Consequences.

Without a response to their actions, bullies will do their bullying again, and next time it will be worse.

No matter how hard it is, the bully must be faced and stopped.

Just ask those that appeased bullies in the past what monsters were unleashed when nothing was done?

It's strange how the evil side of mankind believes it can get its way until it can't.

Then the darker angels of humanity howl like spanked children declaring you punished me.

You stopped me.

You angered me.

The bully is only stopped when we seek justice over me.

Justice comes right quick.

Let it come.

Let us bring it for the right purpose.

Justice renews hope in those that despair.

Justice lifts the minds and hearts of the lost.

Justice now, justice now.

Justice now.

Peace

DFrey

Gift

Snow pelts against the window.

Rain taps on the roof.

Wind whips over the moon on this clear night.

Young voices carry.

Old voices fail.

The moon chases the sun on this clear night.

Abundance finds joy.

Poverty squeezes a half-smile.

Lights bounce and laugh at the cool light of the moon.

Sharing means participation.

Sharing means giving to others.

Sharing means letting go of your story.

To see through the eyes of a stranger's story.

Stone hearts can't give.

Stone ears can't hear.

Stone minds won't change.

No gift will move a spirit that's given up on humanity.

No gift will lift a spirit that has given up on itself.

Snow pelts against the window.

Rain taps on the roof.

Wind whips over the moon on this clear night.

Build a mighty light that burns with the roar of justice.

Build it high so that all can see it's blessed light.

Out of the darkness.

Out of the self-hate.

Out of curiosity, lost spirits will come.

To share with us the gift of hope.

Peace

DFrey

Rescue

You can't save a drowning person if they believe they can swim.

A person's confidence in their belief provides a protection from self-doubt.

The enemy of any belief is doubt.

This is why belief is fortified through a structure of rituals.

You daily repeat a ritual to remind yourself of your commitment to your belief.

Any doubt means you have slipped up.

You left the belief; the belief did not leave you.

A daily affirmation, a daily repeating of sacred words, enshrines the structure of belief in your daily ritual.

Consequently, generally speaking, most beliefs do not lose any followers.

They live, worship, and believe within the protection of like-minded practitioners.

Racism is a belief.

Racism is a belief.

People live, worship, and believe alongside of their fellow practitioners that the white race is solely responsible for the history of this world.

Racism does not lose many followers.

Racists daily use words of discrimination against the race, gender, sexual orientation that they know are not as important as they are.

The believers in white apartheid have no doubt in their correctness.

Their faith has been given to them by their Bible, which is the word of God.

God created Adam, and he was white.

Racist's belief tells them that the Bible is the story of the white race fighting against the forces of evil led by dark-skinned people.

They have no doubt.

You can't save a racist when they know that white equals power.

There is no doubt.

For centuries upon centuries, racism has been fed and grown in wealthy homes and poor.

It is a structure that gives comfort against the harsh realities of life.

Some of us liberals believe we can rescue the racist.

But like a person drowning in a river, if the lifeguard is not careful, they too will be pulled down to the bottom and die.

Racists can't hear us call them back to shore.

Racists can't see that too many people have died.

Racists feel it in their hearts and minds that they are right and we are wrong.

Half this country voted for racism in November of 2020.

Half this country voted for the protection of the Confederacy.

Half this country voted for the separation of immigrant children from their asylum-seeking families.

Half of this country voted for the discrimination against women and gays.

They don't want to be rescued because their water is fine.

They see no danger.

They don't see the dark water rising.

They don't feel the riptide pulling them down.

You can't tell a person they're wrong when they believe they are right.

Racism is a belief.

These senators, congresspeople are defending the white power structure in America.

They are willing to burn the Constitution to keep that structure in place.

This is what we who believe in the Constitution's heart are standing against.

We truly believe in the words that all people are created equal.

So what do we do?

We listen to wise words on how to travel together to the beloved community.

We resist evil.

We make friends across the divide.

We defeat injustice that makes victims of both the target and the actor.

We suffer hate with dignity and grace.

We love, not hate.

We know that the universe bends towards justice every time.

Every time.

That's what we will do.

Peace

DFrey

To Feed Evil

The comfort food of evil is fear.

There are three types of people in this world with a varying degree of mixture between the types.

There are evil people.

There are good people.

There are those in the middle that are neither.

The majority of people throughout our collective history are those that pack the middle way.

The primary goal is to be left alone.

To be insulated from the hot and cold weather of life.

Their choice is not to choose.

To maintain this choice, they have to believe in fear.

Evil is happy to provide the fear on which the fearful feed.

In America, this food is equality.

The founders of this nation were afraid to make everyone free and equal.

The fear was fed upon and made black people 3/5’s of a human.

The fear was fed when states declared they did not have to obey a federal government.

The fear was fed when the civil war fought to bind a nation as one failed to stop the fear of equality.

The table of fear was now set after the failure of reconstruction.

Reconstruction was that brief time when black people were given equal rights.

But the terror stalked the streets in white hoods, in whispers of protect your white women.

Hope was burned away by flaming crosses.

Middle America fed.

Middle America was comforted by their fear of the other.

Those people who live on the bad side of town are different from me, they told themselves.

We humans like to feel superior.

We like to feel we are doing better than others.

The fear-mongers know this.

The fear-mongers who profit from feeding the racial fears of this nation gather to themselves great wealth and power.

These fear mongers are not just in government, in industry, in boardrooms, but they’re in your home.

In your circle of friends.

They keep the heart of racism beating.

Once upon a time, the home of the racist in America was the Democratic Party.

But once President Kennedy and President Johnson pushed for the voting rights act, the Dixiecrats felt uncomfortable with the main course set out by these progressive liberals.

The racists wanted the old bone they had been chewing on since reconstruction.

Nixon and his election team saw an opportunity. 

They called upon the racists to leave the Democrats and come on over the Republican whites-only picnic.

Since Nixon, that’s where the racists of America find their daily bread at the table of the Republican Party.

Trump did not create the menu that feeds fear in our nation.

He is the latest head waiter to take advantage of racial hate and hunger in our country.

Racism at its heart wants us to believe that other people are to blame for why we don’t have nice things.

Racism is a deflection of taking personal responsibility for why things are bad.

Blame the other guy.

I can’t be to blame for why jobs moved away.

I can’t be to blame for why wages are down.

I can’t be bothered to vote.

I can’t be evil, can I?

The Republican Party is happy to feed the fears of Americans.

It’s the easy thing to do.

It’s hard to get people to do the right thing.

How easy is it to floss your teeth every day?

Get enough steps in?

Read a book?

Talk to a friend?

Doing good is not easy because if it was, everyone would do it.

So here we are in a plague that is killing thousands every day.

Half the nation believes in the racism of Trump.

But more than half don’t!

Got to keep your eyes on the prize.

If it was easy to get to the brotherhood of man, everyone would do it.

Peace

DFrey

To Be Blind

No morning.

No night.

No afternoon sun.

No fog in the trees.

No rainbow in the dew.

No leafs saying goodbye.

No ocean waves.

No fields of grain.

No light on.

To be blind.

Tears not seen.

Despair not seen.

Dreams broken, not seen.

Hearts emptied, not seen.

Innocence used not seen.

Love lost.

Not seen.

To be blind.

Fear.

Fear put out the eyes.

Fear killed compassion.

Fear revoked equality.

Fear drove the heart of evil into the Republican Party.

Their fear grew in a sheltered darkness.

Racism was and continues to be used by the GOP to maintain power.

65% of eligible voters voted in the 2020 presidential election.

79 million people voted for Biden.

73 million people voted for Trump.

73 million people shut their eyes.

73 million people closed their minds to the truth that Trump represents.

73 million people agreed that white privilege trumps the American ideal of equality.

73 million people agree that immigrants, black and brown people, women, gays, liberals are not welcome in their vision of what America is supposed to be.

To be blind.

When we shut our eyes to our brother's plight, we shut off the possibility of our own happiness.

When we turn our backs on injustice, that same prejudice will rebound upon us.

When we refuse to do the right thing, we become small, something place and time will forget.

Neglect.

Will leave behind.

To blind yourself on purpose leaves oneself vulnerable to falling off a cliff.

You can't see the future coming.

Americans are afraid.

Fear blinds people.

Blind people are easily led by those with a dark destination.

This is why we must keep the watch-fires burning.

This is why we must stand in the door with the lamp of truth held high.

This is why we will keep a seat open on the freedom train.

But this train is moving out.

We all have a place to go, and it's called the future.

This old world is not slowing down for any party or anyone.

Drop hate be hope.

Peace

DFrey

Possible

The rain falls and gets everyone wet.

A yellow glow of light in a window telling you mom is still awake.

Drawings on the refrigerator.

A young man waiting in a car for a girl to come out.

My test results.

Possible.

Dad is angry.

Where is the money coming from this week?

He’s on the wrong side of town.

God is angry.

God is silent.

Possible.

Will they care?

Will they listen?

Will they feel the things that I feel?

Possible.

The comfort that darkness brings is that it covers us up, so we don’t have to be responsible.

The irresponsibility of comfort.

That’s one of the discomforting realities of life in America.

Comfort shortens vision, curtails possibilities, deadens responsibilities.

This past election, only slightly more than half of Americans were made uncomfortable.

Seventy million people were comfortable with darkness.

They were comfortable with the way things are resentful, fearful, of the way things could be.

Their comfort stopped them short in their journey of life.

They have stopped asking themselves what is possible.

None of us like to admit when we are wrong.

It makes us uncomfortable.

Too many of us rely upon our own ego that tells us that we can never be wrong.

We find ourselves at odds with the universe.

Impossible?

Justice is impossible.

Freedom is impossible.

Equality is impossible.

Love is impossible.

At the core of this impossible view of life, we will always find fear.

Fear of being wrong.

Fear of being right.

Fear of allowing ourselves to be happy.

Fear of being who we are.

Fear of sharing.

There are no magical words to stop this fear.

No magical incantation of phrase that will turn our life from darkness and seek the light.

For those of us who live in the light, all we can do is keep the door open.

It is as it has always been.

The world turns, and a new day comes.

The world stops for no people, no person, no government office.

Life lives; it does not bury itself alive.

We all want love and happiness. 

I know I’m not the only one…

Peace

DFrey

Home

Home is where you are, not where you’re going to be.

Where are you today?

Are you on your way to work?

On your way to the refrigerator?

On your way to despair?

To hope?

Everyone is seeking meaning.

Meaning to life.

Meaning to sadness.

Meaning to circumstance.

Home is where you are.

What does that mean?

Ideas are given power by the people that believe them to be true.

The idea of home for many is an external dwelling.

A place where four walls come together under one roof.

Yet whether you own a home, want a home, you can only rent that home.

All of our lives are a trek from one home or the other.

We don’t own it.

We are only caretakers.

The current occupant.

Renters.

Home is where you are, means you are home.

You are home already, right now, this very second.

Where you are, so is your home.

You are the precious dwelling of the infinite.

Your life is the meaning of home.

There where you are, there also will be life.

Where are you going?

If you are looking for happiness, a home, outside of yourself, what are you looking for?

Unless and until you are happy inside of yourself, you will never find contentment outside of yourself.

Life is the journey, not the destination.

Life is now.

Life is in you now.

Your life is in your home, which is you.

But our lives are not tied to the ground.

All of our lives are mobile.

Each person in their own recreational vehicle traversing the world.

Each gaining experience, building a collection of memories.

Where are you taking your home?

What is your destination?

Are you ignoring the signs on the road?

Are you drowning out the sounds in the streets calling for justice?

Have you pulled the curtains so that you don’t have to see children caged?

Have you put up a fence to keep the neighbors off of your property?

If you have, you have forgotten you’re a renter like the rest of us.

We are all given only so much time in this world.

It is up to each of us to do our best with the time we have.

Not to waste our home.

Our life.

Our time.

Our responsibility to each other.

Our love.

November 3, we have a responsibility to ourselves and our neighbors.

Vote to save our democracy.

Vote to save your home.

Vote for peace.

Vote for love over hate.

Peace

DFrey

Masks of Hate

Slave Masters.

The Church.

The Klan.

The Anarchists.

The Nihilists.

The Fascists.

The Neo-Nazis.

The Skinheads.

The White Supremacist.

The Proud Boys.

The Boogaloo.

Pepe the Frog.

Q-Anon.

The history of the masks of hate.

The masks of hate people wear.

People, yes, people wear these masks for a reason they believe in.

People wear masks of hate to cover their fear.

A fear planted into their spirits by people they trusted.

A fear of a world they do not want to see come into existence.

People fear a world where everyone is equal.

Because in an authentic sense of fear, equality means personal responsibility.

If everyone is equal, there is no one to blame when things go wrong except for yourself.

When life doesn't turn out the way you expect it, who is to blame?

Whole societies, whole industries, whole religions base their existence on blaming the other.

The other guy, the other stranger, the other foreigner, the other unrighteous.

Scapegoats.

A person, a people, to blame for why we don't have nice things.

I certainly can't be to blame because God is on my side.

My friends believe the same way; we can't be wrong.

My parents wouldn't lie to me.

And who maintains these masks of hate?

Who have built empires of wealth on the destruction caused by these masks?

People with wealth and power.

Ever try to take a bone away from a hungry dog?

A hungry dog will bite your hand.

It will let you die so it can have just one last chew on its bone.

It won't listen to reason.

It's only concern is the bone belongs to it.

The bone is believed to be the dog's only means of survival.

If the dog hasn't learned how to share, trying to take a bone away from it will bloody your hand.

People wear all kinds of masks.

The mask of hate covers the fear of reprisal.

That certain future that is coming, we all can see it now.

A brotherhood of man where blacks and whites live together.

They judge each other by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

People have a fear of this future becoming real.

They imagine the same horrors that they allowed to happen to black and brown people to be reciprocated.

They are fighting for a false way of life.

Just like that dog fighting for that last piece of gristle on a bone.

So as we prepare to vote out the White House's chief hater, keep in mind the prize.

A world where children are no longer taught to wear masks.

A world where children can be who they are.

Free, living in truth and justice for all.

Peace.

DFrey

Wait

The sun at dawn.

That coffee in the pot.

A red light.

Wait.

In line for a meal.

In line for a job.

In line to vote.

Wait.

To be seen.

To be recognized.

To be respected.

Wait.

Freedom.

Equality.

Justice.

Peace.

Wait.

It’s easy to sit back and not do anything when you have everything.

It’s easy to dismiss the tears, the fears, the anguish of people not like you.

It’s easy to live in fear of change.

It’s easy not to see, not to hear, not to feel when doing so means sharing this world.

It’s easy to tell others to wait when you are in power.

It’s easy to wait.

Wait.

Why wait?

This nation of ours has wrestled and fought over the timetable of freedom that it laid down in its foundational documents.

It has fought every step of the way to allow those words of freedom to ring true.

You would think that a people whose credo is freedom for all would be cheerful and grant this to be true.

Yet here we are today in the first part of the 21st century in America, and a good 40% of American’s do not agree with the Constitution.

My freedom is more important than your freedom.

My power is sanctified; I will not share of my abundance to you the takers.

It’s bizarre that a people who declare themselves defenders of liberty and justice only mean themselves.

No one else need apply.

Wait?

No, we ain’t waiting no more.

The Freedom Train is pulling out of the station.

We got a few more weeks till this election, and we are moving on.

Freedom won’t wait.

Freedom like a falling rain will change due to the season.

In the Winter, it will fall like snow, slow and beautiful.

During the Spring long and drenching.

In the summer, hot and fast, the thunder rolls across the hills and echoes in the valleys.

There is no need to wait.

Everyone has a ticket to get on the freedom train.

It’s up to each of us to get on board or not.

To get your ticket punched, all you have to do is vote.

Don’t wait.

Vote.

Peace

DFrey

Racism

Racism is a belief.

It is founded on a biblical principle in Western society.

More specifically, in the evangelical interpretation of what the followers believe is the divine word of God.

The Old Testament, taken from the Jewish faith, the Torah, was Christianized to be believed to be infallible.

It is the literal truth.

So Yahweh, God, laid down the rules to Bronze Age society and mandated their truth.

Everything a place and a place for everything.

Each person is born into a set of circumstances that God has prescribed for their life.

To wish for and to want anything better for your life is a sin against the will of God.

A poor person wanting to have money.

Sin.

A woman wanting not to be beaten by her husband.

Sin.

A slave wanting freedom.

Sin.

To change your life is to change the will of God, which is a sin.

We are not to want more than what we are given.

This is why in the Charles Dickens tale of Oliver Twist, when the orphan boy Oliver asks for more gruel, he is seen as a sinner.

He is depraved, going against the will of God.

No matter if he is hungry, starving, wanting more than where God has put you is evil.

Racism is a belief.

To paraphrase Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the most racist hour in America is that hour in church every Sunday.

The second most racist time is the hour that proceeds in Sunday school. 

I was raised Evangelical, a Quaker.

I can affirm what Dr. King has said.

The tenants, the foundations of racism, are taught in our places of protestant, evangelical houses of worship to the faithful as the foundation of society.

More than once, I listened to the following tale from the pew.

Noah built a boat.

He and all the animals, including his family, his sons, and their wives, rode out the storm.

When the land was dry, Noah was thirsty and decided to make wine.

He planted the seeds, grew the grapes, made himself some new wine, got drunk, and passed out.

While he was passed out, his sons performed some unnatural acts upon the sleeping Noah.

God got upset.

He visited a curse upon the three sons of Noah.

Upon Ham, he cursed him with being black.

That's why we have black people today.

Their blackness is an outward sign of their inherited sin.

That is why black people as lesser in the eyes of God than white people.

Do you understand the problem?

Racism is a belief.

Whtie religious people are defending their faith in God and the order of the universe when they are standing up for racism.

To present any kind of rational argument before a racist is useless.

Have you ever tried to get someone to give up their religion?

Give up drinking drugs?

Unless they see their problem, it's impossible to elicit a change in mind and heart.

Once a person is a racist, their fate is set in granite tablets.

Like weeds in a garden, racists will always be with us.

But we don't have to let the weeds take over the garden of humanity.

We can keep racism in check.

We, the people, have that ability.

That power.

Because together, we are stronger than any Bronze Age story.

Together we have the power to demonstrate a better way of life.

A life where harmony makes the very stones sing.

As night is as to day, the light of justice, of freedom for all must rule our lives.

There is a kind of philosophical idea that we need opposites to understand what is right.

The beauty of life is to see the wonder, the miracle of the diversity of humanity.

All wanting the same things.

Life, liberty, freedom, and love.

Love asks more, never less.

Add love, find hope.

Peace

DFrey

Say Her Name

Breonna Taylor’s death and subsequent charging only of the officer that shot into other apartments and not the two who did and who shot her and killed her is an obvious cover-up.

Covering for bullies.

Covering for racism.

Covering for a white apartheid that says one race gets justice, everyone else doesn’t.

Racism is not a thing that will smoothly go away.

Racism is a belief, and like any belief, it has its promoters and followers.

It’s priests, and it’s laypeople.

Ultimately we will never get a leopard to willingly change its own spots.

Ain’t going to happen.

Which is why we move forward, why we march, why we shout, why we talk, why we listen.

Why we work together.

Why we get into good trouble.

We that believe in justice for all will lead us to that better world where the brotherhood of man awaits us.

Justice comes in ways we do not always expect.

Yet justice will always answer for those that ring the bell of freedom.

Peace.

Forgotten

Rural America and urban America, are they really different?

Both are underserved by their elected leaders.

Both suffer from the absence of economic investment.

Both see the absence of real jobs.

Both are forgotten by educational institutions.

Both lack 21st-century infrastructure.

Both have stagnated wages.

Both shop at the only store in town, the dollar store.

Both cash their checks at a Payday Loan.

Both have lost hope.

If they are both so alike, what keeps them from seeing each other’s plight?

Racism.

Racism.

Racism.

I am white.

Was raised in the middle of white racist suburban, rural America.

Where everything, including God, is defined as the head of the white race.

Where the first question you ask is, where is that person from?

What is their race?

A queer reality permeates the community of white America.

White America believes the thing that keeps them from being in the same boat as black and brown people is their whiteness.

Somehow whiteness grants a boon, a step up, a benefit of the doubt.

Given the right circumstances, the rich, the wealthy, the aristocrat, the ownership class will invite them to their cash orgy.

It’s their witness that grants superiority even in the face of poverty.

The poverty of ideas.

The poverty of faith.

Poverty of spirit

The poverty of honor.

The poverty of community.

The poverty of empathy.

The perverse fear of reverse discrimination is real.

If equality was somehow made real, it is firmly believed black, and brown America will take revenge on white America.

As it was told to me over and over by one racist relative…

Universal health care…

If I had a broken leg and a black guy had a fractured leg under liberal Democrats, the black guy would be treated first, get their treatment for free, and I would be told to go elsewhere.

The idea that justice for all floats all boats is a fairy tale to racist America.

You are either on top or on the bottom.

This real fear keeps racist America from seeing their reality.

They have been forgotten.

They have been forgotten just as much as black and brown people have.

The problem is, has, and will ever be the wealthy.

They have gone by other names, aristocrats, the rich, the ownership class.

However, they remain the bane of humanity.

The takers.

Racism continues to blind us to the simple truth of greed.

If only the plight of racism could be waved away overnight.

But it can’t.

It is as much a fact as it is a belief in the human heart.

If we are to come together, somebody has to reach out a hand of compassion.

Somebody must be strong and say, welcome friend.

Someone needs to say my table is open; come eat and be joyful.

That someone can be you.

You can be the bridge where the forgotten meet.

You and I can be hope.

It begins today.

Now.

DFrey

Peace

Sports

There is nothing like taking away the bottle from those who indulge in indifference to bring attention to what really matters.

Indifference is a kind of drug.

Indifference numbs our sense of responsibility.

It numbs our compassion.

It numbs our hope.

It blinds us to brutality.

It makes us deaf to the sounds of injustice.

It cripples our will to stand for what is right.

Sports is the novocaine injected into the jaw to keep you from feeling the pain in society.

Have you ever heard sports called the great distraction?

A pastime?

What are we being distracted from?

What are we passing over?

The answer has always been to keep us happily gilded and not question why things are the way they are.

You give a child a toy and tell them to go play so you can do the thing you want to do.

You do this because you don't want to take the effort to engage with the child.

You don't want to take responsibility because it's inconvenient.

You have better things to do.

You. You. You. You.

Distraction.

Sports play their part in our society.

In and of itself, it is not evil or good.

It is a thing that can be enjoyed.

But ask yourself why this President and his supports were so gung-ho to get sports back?

Distraction.

Today right now, the NBA leads the way to stop the distractions.

They have the power of its members as does the rest of sports to focus the attention of a nation.

They have the power to break the stalemate of indifference.

They have the ability to address our broken police force.

When a thing is broke, it's broke.

Some things can't be repaired any more because its integrity is broken.

COVID came along and removed some of our distractions.

George Floyd's brutal death and the indifference of the officers who killed him burned into the hearts and minds of all those who saw the video.

Enough is enough.

Time and time again, the integrity of our police force has been demonstrated to be broke.

Broke.

When a thing has been repaired over and over again and still doesn't work?

It's time to get a new thing?

Am I right?

Responsibly, responsibly our old broken police forces should be set aside.

And in its place, a new force created.

A new force reimagined.

What it should be.

A clean slate.

Some things broke can't be fixed; you have to get new.

This time genuinely based on justice for all.

Our current police to no longer be the defacto guardians of white supremacy.

To truly protect and serve all.

No longer can they see themselves as the Marshall in a lawless territory to be judge, jury, and executioners.

But to serve and protect a diverse society.

Some things broke can't be fixed.

You have to get new.

Peace

DFrey