This silly cartoon struck me funny. At the same time I laugh, sorrow is mixed in with the mirth. First thing I thought was my weariness of cartoon references to Jesus healing the sick for free, as if a medical profession is measured by religion. I'm tired of political chicanery making comparisons to Jesus, like what-would-Jesus-do? How can I guess what Jesus would do? He wasn't always sweet and politically correct. There is the ancient saying that God works in strange ways. Like I wouldn't presume what God might "do," I wouldn't presume what Jesus might do. Jesus was simply open to the flow of the Spirit, and I would never presume to guess what "the Spirit" might do in any circumstance. My most recent obvious answer to a prayer came the next day and in a very surprise form that reminded me, God works in strange (unpredictable) ways. This is why I would rather pray for help on a difficult decision where I cannot see what is the best way to go for all concerned. I may not pray as much as I'm "supposed to," though I prefer to take responsibility for my own decisions and learn how to make better decisions for myself as I go along. It's when I'm stumped that I go to prayer. And when I see things unfold, I think: I would never have seen that solution.
magritte
Maybe if I prayed more the Spirit would flow through me too. Then I'd get crucified. I don't want that, so I don't push it. Like I was thinking of my friend Jr Maxwell I took for a man of wisdom, a wise man. He saw himself a fool and laughed off any suggestion of wisdom. But the way I saw it, a wise man in this world could only be a fool. Living in this world goes so counter to wisdom that someone with wisdom could only be dismissed a fool. I see babies come into this world straight from the spirit world where love IS. I see their eyes wide open loving everything they see, the spirit of love beaming in their eyes. Then I see, a step at a time, the light in the eyes shaded over a little bit at a time as the child is taught how we live in this world, until by the time a kid is ready for school, the light in the eyes is long gone, further in some than in others, and I watch that process all through life until we get to men in their 70s and 80s locked down in mental compartments, a lifetime of conclusions hardened into cement in the man's head until the thinking process has hardened unto reaction. When a man gets there, he shuts out understanding as pussy (feminine--weak) and can't take anything seriously spoken by a feminine voice, even on evening news.
Having lunch today with a woman friend I would freely call intellectual, a brilliant woman, a brilliant human being, and, in my way of seeing, very much a true human being, I told her that in this phase of my life I have seen men really deficient in their own humanity. I know very few who are what I would call a true human being. That doesn't mean there are none. I'm wondering if it has to do with several thousand years in our evolution of consciousness, boys growing up to be warriors, obedience the rule among warriors. It's the rank that matters, not the man. Do as you're told, not what you think is right. I see the men of the right wing in America today, about half the male population, the cement-heads who believe killing solves problems. Short of killing, hitting solves problems. Isn't that the great American truth. At the rate of 30,000 a year we Americans kill one another with guns. How many by other means? We're the killingest people on earth. All my life I have seen the passion for killing in especially working class men, the warrior class. Pop entertainment knows that killing is guaranteed box-office, so we grow up watching movies and tv where killing is hip, no consequences, no funerals, no life, faceless, a mushroom.
robert longo, bodyhammers
A man I have known for a lot of years has wanted to kill somebody all the time I've known him. The passion must have its beginning in his childhood. My guess is he'd discover on the psychiatric couch after about five years that it was his daddy he wanted to kill. He likes to threaten that he will kill somebody, from time to time, but he'll never get it done. He's a bully and bullies are chicken. Bullies only pick on smaller, weaker, dependent. They never do anything that requires courage. Having no courage makes them bullies. I don't know any women with this kind of affliction. Surely there are some, maybe several. They might be playing roller derby. The movie BONNIE AND CLYDE comes to mind, Clyde showing Bonnie his gun and Bonnie running her fingers along the barrel made me think of two young people I knew who were once lovers not long out of high school. Seeing them as Bonnie and Clyde gave me a better understanding than I had before of what Bonnie and Clyde were like as people. Kids not long out of high school, or that age anyway, "look at my gun, baby," and she's so impressed. I have an underlying feeling that the rate of murder in America may be the karmic return on how the early white people on this continent took it. They killed an entire continent of people with guns, killed in the wild wastefully, unto extinctions that are ongoing, wiping out the natural world that sustains us. It seems a karmic debt that is being paid by people killing people in the world of the conqueror at such an alarming rate, and nobody is alarmed. It's no more than an eye-popping statistic the first time you see it. The second and third time it's familiar, no longer interesting.
robert longo, legacy
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