relate

Origin:

Latin relātus, superlative past participle of referre to carry back (see refer)

Carry what? Back where? To a place you've been before. That's the implication, that it's returning to a former place or previous time.
Relating to another person is trying to touch a familiar spot in them that you know from before they arrived in your presence. A place you already know
because now you are being carried back to something and that is only possible if you were already there. How are you being carried? On the wings of the dove.
On the filament of a silver thread, to quote Robert A. Johnson. It is the way we can touch another person. It is the way they can touch us. Being willing to hold
on to the thread is all that is necessary to be carried back.

In order to be in relationship I must be willing to be carried back to a place that is not right here and now. I must open up to looking at my history and carry them back to that place to show them where I have been and to see the commonality I have with them. To expose what got me here to another. Only in this
way are we able to make a connection, to relate. (Some 5th Step work here, but that's about our wrongs and this is bigger than that. This is about all of it.)

But going back there is not always easy to remember and not always pleasant. Nor is it an easy place to take a visitor. There are risks here and they
are not small. The implication of the word "carry" suggests weight; the weight of the load we haul when going back.
We must also be willing to be carried back to that place in them.

The word Namaste is a way of expressing it: "The gesture Namaste represents the belief that there is a Divine spark within each of us that is located in the heart chakra. The gesture is an acknowledgment of the soul in one by the soul in another." I read a book by
Ram Das years ago and in the front it says namaste means, "I honor that place in you that when you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me we are one."

In relating we are seeking to unite. We share with another from our treasury.

Standing up

The current condition of our world has me in a nearly constant state of anxiety. Several times each day information comes from various news sources or conversations with acquaintances and
friends which indicates the varied and complex areas of difficulty that we face. The spending and debt issues of America feel like the quicksand I saw in movies as a child that
would make me cringe with fear. Having gone to the first Tea Party in Ft. Lauderdale back in 2009, when the tee shirt for the event lamented $2 trillion in debt, the thought that we have shooshed
down the slope to a devastating $14+ trillion is breathtaking and surreal. I know that's a lot of superlatives but what can I do? The situation calls for every one of them.

Speaking of the Tea Party, I actually have experienced a change in the winds of our Country since that cat got out of the bag. Others who think as I do about the constant barrage of offenses against
our freedom and ability to live without the heavy ropes of bureaucracy tying us to the ground and choking the creativity and individuality out of us and our children are finally stirred from the stupor of
"getting along" and are not afraid to come out of the house and into the streets. The energy I feel from those of us speaking is a powerful thing and I am experiencing a thrill to be part of it.

In the 60's the generation which is now heading into retirement (way too early by comparison to previous generations) has been populated by a dichotomy of thinking that still exists today. There was
the noisy, angry, anti-tradition, anti-religious, and dare I say it, amoral minority who preferred to intimidate and dominate the conversation rather than live and let live. This segment of our Country included
the happy-go-lucky gang of bead-wearing, dope-smoking, free-loving folks who have since grown up and gotten real jobs and lives and look back at those times as an aberration; a time of
acting out and rebelling such as every other generation has had. But there is another faction among them which never stopped its agenda and has simply changed uniforms and hidden in plain
sight...in our universities, our public offices, our media and even in come cases in our churches. These are not people to be taken lightly. They are powerful and dangerous. They pretend to be of us
but they are NOT. We have allowed them for many years to take our freedoms away and to warp the values of our Country as expressed in our Constitution and to rewrite our history for our children to
read and learn what is their version of our values. It is our fault. We let them get away with it. We turned our heads and thought "What can you do?" "How awful; do you believe that?" "Seriously?"
But we didn't stand up and speak. We didn't stand up at all. We hid and cowered and they got the power we gave them. Who can blame them? It's like we didn't care enough to stand up for what
we say we believe so why shouldn't they take over. If a thief comes to your house and you leave the doors and windows unlocked and turn your back to the door as they leave with all your stuff, how
can you be angry with the thief? Don't we have a responsibility to defend our property? Don't we have a duty to our children and ourselves and our principles to STAND UP!!!!!???
If not then just SHUT UP!

We are encouraged to be a population of mediocrity and non-confrontation, where a child is dulled into numbness. Parents have allowed their children to be taught lies and told that we are a bad people who are destroying the world, the natural world and the cultural world of other peoples, while also supporting the dreadful Jewish state of Isreal as well. How can it be that we haven't cared enough to read the textbooks given to our young? We've been so busy and trusting of our education system that we didn't do our due diligence with regard to our own children!

The incremental takeover of many of the things we would never have believed possible take my breath away: Supreme Court giving away property rights of private citizens; Ten Commandments treated with total disrespect while pornography is protected; sex education of little kids is closer to immorality than common sense; the outrage that we are racists because we don't agree with someone's political beliefs; the honoring of people who openly speak of destroying our Country because they are in our universities when they do it. I lose sleep thinking of the wasteland we have allowed to develop around us.

But as I said before, there is a new wind blowing now. The American people who were the OTHERS back then, those who found the traditional American values and history to our liking and whose
hearts drummed louder when the National Anthem played or when the flag went by; those who were grateful for our great good fortune to be living in the the greatest Country in the history of man;
those who tried to live by the work ethic of our parents and teach it to our own children; those who believed in the value of life...all life, but especially of human life; those who cared that the world looks to us
for leadership and charity and who are willing to be the soldier for good in the world; this is the population that is now finally awake and standing out in the light. It too is powerful and when in full gear
can not be quieted easily, though the aforementioned are bound and determined to try. We are not going to be put back in our bottle. We are not willing to be quiet or to turn our backs on our values.
We are saying what we have thought. We are not buying the bs anymore. We are getting together and not staying isolated from one another. In this way we see we are a powerful force and that feeds
the thumping heart of each and everyone of us.

So when I am feeling that sickness from fear in the middle of the night I will be writing to you to touch others who believe in the goodness and greatness that is America and with God's help we can make a
stand like our forefathers did against this tyranny. The tyranny we have allowed into our lives for too too long.