Juneteenth Federal Holiday Meditation 2022

Today's Google Doodle is illustrated by Jerome and Jeromyah Jones, father and son.

Here is their website.

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“When you hear me play that long intro, it’s me stalling. I was thinking, ‘What the hell am I going to sing?’ I think the word ‘freedom’ came out of my mouth because I saw it in front of me. I saw the freedom that we were looking for. And every person was sharing it, and so that word came out.”

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"...  this is the ballad of our freedom the day you realize we are more than free.  We are loved."

-- Kevin Burns, Jr., on Juneteenth 2021

"The Freedom of Real Apologies"

 

Above:  Layli Long Soldier and Pádraig Ó Tuama

"There’s an anecdote told about a person who asked a scientist how to make bread from scratch. Well, the scientist said, first you have to invent the universe. 

And there’s another anecdote, about a tourist who’s lost while driving around Ireland. How do I get on the road to Dublin? they ask a local. First thing to say is that I wouldn’t start from here, the local replies. 

They’re funny, those anecdotes, and also partially frustrating, which is where some of their humor lies. But they also contain profound wisdom: None of us are alone (you can’t make bread from scratch, you’re in a long-line of humanity that’s made bread) and there are poor places to begin something. "

From "The Freedom of Real Apologies"

Journeys / Being of use

Journeys bring power and love
back into you.  If you
can't go somewhere,
move in the passageways of the self.
They are like shafts of light,
always changing, and you change
when you explore them.

(Djalal Ad-Din Rumi)


Last Sunday, I drove nearly the entire length of the state of Washington to meet with a friend from childhood and her husband of at least 40 years (whom I had not met before) and their shy sweet Bernese Mountain Dog.  In order to adopt a puppy, they had driven up from their home in a small community which is located high in the mountains of southeastern California.  We met in Carson, Washington, a tiny town located on the Columbia River gorge.

My old friend and I met when we were 12 or 13 years old.  We used to walk to junior high school together.  In high school, we took long walks from our homes in suburban Redwood City, California, into the beautiful grassy hills to the east of Redwood City.  We walked there in the days before Highway 280 cut through those rolling hills, before the hills were filled to the brim with houses, while the Vietnam War was still raging.  We were not part of the "in crowd."  We were both odd and eccentric and enjoyed each other's company.  My family went to church.  Her family didn't.  I remember the time she brought me to a Buddhist festival in Palo Alto.  We belonged to a small loosely connected group of young women who lived within walking distance of each other and went to the same high school.  Below is a photo of three of us.  If my memory serves me well, the photo was probably taken at the 16th birthday gathering for my old friend.  That would have been in 1965.  We are all wearing "Beatle" hats.  Her father was a psychiatrist. Their home was filled with books.

Here are the senior yearbook photos of my friend and me.  Neither of us enjoy being in front of a camera:

My parents chose that photo of me because they paid for the photos. I'd love to see the rest of photos and see what was not chosen by them.

After we graduated from high school in 1967, one of the things my friend did was become a surfer, and she spent weekends surfing in Santa Cruz.  Another thing she did was go to Stanford University, following the tradition of both of her parents.  After graduating from Stanford with a degree in English Literature, she went to law school and had a long career as a lawyer.  Her husband was a conscientious objector and, as a result of his alternative service in a library which had early computers, he had a long career in the field of computers.

In 1967, I left Redwood City to attend the University of California at Irvine, studying Art and English Literature.  My friend and I kept in touch.  She visited Irvine.  I visited her at Stanford.  It was the time of protests against the Vietnam War.  The man she loved achieved conscientious objector status.  The man I loved was drafted in April of 1969.  He was a high school dropout and a surfer.  We considered going to Canada.  He met with draft counselors in Oakland on the day before he went to Vietnam but felt sure that he would not be granted conscientious objector status.  He did not want to go to prison (although he ended up in prison years later for drug and alcohol-related offenses).  He did not want to go to Canada.  He made the fateful decision to go to Vietnam, serving as a helicopter mechanic, returning as a drug-addicted war-haunted man in December of 1970. We lived together for nearly 5 months.  We separated in the first weeks of May 1971 after a terrifying episode where the violence of the war that haunted him was directed at me.

In 1973, in an attempt to go on with my life, I left California.  My friend and I gradually lost touch with each other, although I did visit her at her law office in the early 1980s, and she contacted me
in the early 1990s.

A year ago, during the December holidays, she wrote a note letting me know that she and her husband had moved from the San Francisco Peninsula to a remote place in the Sierras.

That note led to our respective journeys to Carson, WA.

What got me started on this post was reading this article about Daniel Berrigan who died yesterday at age 94.

You have to struggle to stay alive and be of use as long as you can. 
(Daniel Berrigan)

I've also been listening to George Harrison's final album and wanted to share these thoughts from
George Harrison:



Lyrics from "Brainwashed":

The soul does not love.  It is love itself.
It does not exist.  It is existence itself.
It does not know.  It is knowledge itself.
How to Know God, page 130

And then I've also been meaning to share Joni Mitchell singing "God Must Be A Boogie Man."



May Love bless and keep us always.

"Inside @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz"

“The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned. This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill.”
— Ai Weiwei

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains,
but to live in a way that respects and enhances the
freedom of others.
(Nelson Mandela)

Imaginary Brothers / No Easy Walk

In Broken Images
Robert Graves
24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

Thanks to wood s lot, July 26, 2011, for the poem by Robert Graves.

“You can see that ‘there is no easy walk to freedom anywhere,’ and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountain tops of our desires.” - Nelson Mandela, quoting Jawaharlal Nehru, from a presidential address to the ANC Transvaal Congress (also known as the “No Easy Walk to Freedom” speech) Transvaal, South Africa, Sept. 21, 1953.

("Self-Portrait with Imaginary Brothers," painted by am in the late 1980s)

Calendar Series: 36th Month / Freedom with Tears and Laughter (1988)

"Perfectly ordered disorder designed with a helter-skelter magnificence." (Emily Carr, 1871-1945) 

In this second year of my recovery from eating disorders came a new freedom, with tears AND laughter. All my life I had been running away from sorrow, not knowing that I was also running away from joy.