May 15, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Slavery in 2013

Yes, there is slavery in America as well as in most other countries in the world. Why would people buy and sell other human beings? Greed, profit, gender discrimination, cheap labor force are some of the reasons.

In some parts of our country and other countries, a girl is more likely to be raped than to learn how to read. Every year, 60 million girls are sexually assaulted at or on their way to school. There is an estimated 800,000 people trafficked across national borders annually. Eighty per cent are girls and women.

Here in America, on any day in any month, someone may be sold into slavery. 100,000 to 300,000 people are trafficked annually. 83 % are being sold for sexual work. It is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world.

Public Broadcasting Stats

Worldwide, most trafficked persons are Asians. Up to 800,000 people, men, women, boys and girls are Trafficked across international borders. They account for up to 32 billion dollars in revenue. Most trafficking has to do with labor, including sexual labor, and children being sold to armies as soldiers. Can you imagine knowing that every day for the rest of your life, you will work for someone who oppresses human beings? You will never see a penny of the fruits of your labor, and they can do with you whatever they wish, including raping you or sending you to kill or die in a battle you will never live long enough to understand.

Help stop trafficking — learn more at www.enditmovement.com

Slavery is still real

May 10, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

All Mother’s on this Planet Have a Day Even if They Aren’t Aware of it.

One Woman, One World, One Family, unending love.

Mother’s Day is huge here in America .This is nice. Flowers, candy, going out to dinner, a new plant for the garden. These make up an American Mother’s Day. I would like to remind you that Mothers are in every country and being a Mother is quite different than it is here.

Mothers in other countries don’t have a day or even an hour where they feel especially loved and appreciated. Mother’s in other countries face tragedies we never even can imagine. Many mothers continue to die in childbirth, many mothers don’t have milk to feed their babies. Many mothers can’t dress their babies up really cute because there are only rags to dress them in. I guarantee you that some mothers, on the American holiday, will be watching their babies die of starvation and diseases such as Malaria.

Most of the mothers around the world will be required to leave a girl baby by the side of the road because of misogyny and some are trying to heal the faces of daughters whose boyfriend threw acid in their face because they turned down a marriage proposal. The boy throws acid in her face so no one else will want her. This is classic power and control. Some mothers will be assisting a medicine woman to hold down her daughter so genital mutilation can occur just like what was done to her. In some countries, if a girl has not had this done, no one will marry her.

Why is all of this happening? It is because women and girls are second class citizens and have no rights and no power to protect them legally in the system. They are owned, used, punished, tormented and often killed.
My request is that from now through Sunday you would all pray for the mothers around the world. Pray for them to be protected, pray for healing and food, pray for an end to human traffakking. Please pray that some day millions of women around the world will understand that mother is a term of love, support and pride. Pray that a year will come when all women will be able to hold their heads up and walk with pride and dignity.

National Organization of Women

Hug someone today and everyday

Mothers unite to help each other and the children. Make Mother’s Day really mean something to a mother somewhere in the world..

April 19, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

I Follow the Religion of Love

A Quote for Positive living.

“My heart has become capable of every form; it is a pasture
for gazelles and a retreat for Christian monks,
And a tenple for idols, and the pilgrim’s Ka’ba,
and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Koren’

I follow the religion of Love, whichever way his camels take.
My religion and my faith is the true religion.”

——–Ibn al-Arabi
Translated from Thirteenth-Century Arabic by Anne and Christopher Fremantle

Portrait of a Dervish

” O musician of my soul,
play His song
play His song with my every breath.” —Rumi

“I lift my hands to You in prayer.
Grant me strength to stand alone.
You are the one to whom I belong,
I’ll sing my song to You, and give YOu all that is in my heart.” –The Chassid swaying by the Wailing Wall chants a niggun by the great Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav.

” Earth Mother, I honor your body.
Earth Mother, I sing to your stones.
Earth Mother, I enter your body.
Earth Mother, I honor your bones.” —Chant evoked to reclaim the Feminine aspect of the Divine

Sculpture garden in Windsor, Ont. Detroit in background. Photograph copyrighted by Barbara Mattio2009

March 6, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

The Truth

The face of truth is open,
The eyes of truth are bright,
The lips of truth are never closed,
The head of truth is upgright,
The breat of truth stands forward,
The gaze of truth is straight,

If you are a child of the Universe

Truth has neither fear nor doubt,
Truth has patience to wait,
The words of truth are touching,
The voice of truth is deep,
The law of truth is simple:
All that you sow you reap.
The soul of truth is flaming,
The heart of truth is warm,
The mind of truth is clear,
And firm through rain or storm.
Facts are but its shadows,
Truth stands above all sin;
Great be the bettle in life,
Truth in the end shall win.
Soul of truth is God.
Life of truth is eternal,
Immortal is its past,
Power of truth will endure,
Truth shall hold to the last.
–Hazarat Inayat Khan

Towards the One

March 3, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

The Separation of Church and State

Separation of Church and State

I am wondering if any of you have been gnashing your teeth, and shout at the TV whenever you watch the news. There are a lot of negative issues. For instance, the United States now educater fewer scientists each year, we import more high-tech products, many Americans think that the answer for teen pregnancy is not education on birth control and safe sex, but abstinance. Don’t get me wrong I, in theory, believe that abstinance should be taught but there is a gap between theory and reality. Teens with raging hormones don’t always understand what parents and schools are trying to tell them.

My biggest frustration, however, is the people who are talking and insisting on the idea that this country was formed as a Christian Country. So, I am going to explain what is really has happened.

” Those who won our independence believed…that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people,,,that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope, and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government…Fear cannot justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.” ——by Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.

Thomas Jefferson on separation of church and state

God is claimed by both sides in a war, and the Bible is used to defend the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, slavery, lynching, apartheid, racism, povery, violence against women, homophobia and a score of other human tragedies. The three largest Christian-right organizations call for “Crusaders” to pray that certain U.S. Supreme Court justices whose voting records they dislike will die. Televangelist Pat Robertson blames talk show host, Ellen Deganeres for the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. He also intimidated that God had sent the Hurricane to punish people. Robertson also declares that the attack on America on 9-11, was also God punishing America.

Did you know?

The Air Force Academy, has developed a “strident evangelicalism”. There have been fifty-five complaints of religious discrimination filed in the past few years. The Academy has also become a test tube of sexual harrassment. Female cadets filed charges that were ignored or overlooked. Faith-based prisons are apparently making money by reaping in the profits of spreading the Gospel to convicts. As taxpayers, we pay for proselytizing prisons without ever giving permission or voting for our money to be used in this manner. Inmates receive special priveleges if they follow all-day, all-week, Christian agendas. Prision ministries have as much as $46 million budgets.

Kennedy quote re: Church and State

The Constitution of the United States of America does not contain even one reference to a diety — on purpose. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the Founding Fathers of our country and he said, the Founding Fathers were a hodgepodge of freethinkers, Deists, agnostics, Christians, and Freemansons. Above all they were radicals.

“Question with boldness even the existence of a god.” —Thomas Jefferson

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind.” –James Madison

“I doubt of Revelation itself.” –Benjamin Franklin

” My own mind is my church” –Thomas Paine

George W. Bush added, “so help me God.” to his presidential oath of office.

Pat Robertson claims that “In God We Trust” was on our currency and “Under God” was the U.S. motto from 1776. These were not added until 1950.

John Adams declared, ” The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789, ” No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living genetation.”

We now take it for granted that churches, temples, mosques, and other religious institutions are tax exempt-but it was not always that way, nor was it the intent of the Founders. This policy was the fruit of a religious campaign.

So was “In God We Trust” getting stamped onto our coinage and the insertion of ” Under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance. The religious movement that we are living in is different. This time is the blatant political mobilization of extreme right religious forces, which seek to change the Constitutional mandate to keep Church and State separated. This mandate is why the Founding Fathers called their new country a Republic, not a Theocracy.

Ronald Reagan’s quote

I would like to be clear about one thing in this blog. I believe the Fathers built a wall between Church and State. I also believe in the Divinity of the Universe. I believe it dwells within each of us and all of life around us. The One wants us to love, support, accept, care for each other and all living things including our planet. He/she/It does not a government run. So think about what is really happening right now in our country.

Some excerpts taken from Fighting Words, by Robin Morgan

February 25, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Just What Were the Founding Fathers Intending in This New Republic

Portraits of our Founding Fathers

The has been a lot of conversation and debate lately about our founding fathers. The heroic revolutionaries who deciced that these colonies must break away from England and become a Republic and there had to be freedom here. These men were very different from those who are in government today. They were actually willing, may I go so far as to say, they looked forward to fighting and gaining our independence. They were a brave and very diverse group of men.

America was imagined and created by men who were liberals and revolutionaries.

The original words of our founding fathers found in the Constitution, Bill of Rights show us a picture of men who were radicals for their day. The entire idea of what they wanted to create here was liberal and so very radical. The founders were a kind of motley crew. I say this with no disrespect meant. They were a group of rather unlikely idealists. They also were imperfect. Some were slave holders, Paine wrote anti-slavery pamphlets and Benjamin Franklin organized the first anti-slavery societies.

Women were never on their radar, even after the famous letter Abigail Adam’s wrote to her husband John Adams. “If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound to obey any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” Despite Abiagail Adam’s efforts, our rights weren’t up for discussion.

The Founding Fathers were not uniformly Christian, they were freethinkers, agnostics, atheists, Christians, Freemasons, and Deists. A Deist professes belief in as-yet-unknown powers evinced in the natural, scientifically observed universe. But whether they were religious or not, they fought for a secular state and for freedom of belief.

The question of slavery was the only big issue they were unable to find a solution for. However, it ended up being left out of the Constitution and they agreed to leave it to later generations to solve this divisive problem. So, as you know, Lincoln was the man who picked up the gauntlet and freed the slaves and held this union together.

These Founding men were radical and liberal.

It is time to reclaim our nation and return it to its original “patriotic” values. These constitute our rightful inheritance and inspiration. The United States of America was the dream of these great men we revere so much. They considered it the great experiement. To this day, the reason the world wants to come here is not really for the big TV’s, fast foods, etc. The real reason the world wants to come here is still to be part of the remarkable experiment.

After the first Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what type of government the Founders had chosen. Franklin replied, “We have given you a republic—if you can keep it. I believe we must never give up.

Original sketch of the drawing up of our Constitution

Part of this blog has been excerpted from Fighting Words, by Robin Morgan.

December 14, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

Another Day of Shock and Horror

May the angels hold all of these children and aad the fallen adults in their wings and carry them on to the arms of The Beloved

My heart is heavy today as I listen and pray for the victims, their families and friends. I pray also for the survivors and first responders.I don’t believe that I will ever forget the little boy, in fourth grade who said, “We are just glad we are alive.” I also heard a mother say,” My heart is broken into little pieces.”

This is not the blog I planned for today and yet it is the one that I need to speak about. There were also school employees who were also dead. I am beginning to hear of acts of heroism that saved further lives. This bravery speaks to the best in the human heart.

I have visited the social media today and what I read that a few people have written is as frightening as this terrible act. We must not forget that how we respond to terrible events is important to how well survivors heal and how well families and friends can begin the process of healing. It is a process and it is a journey. Having lost someone very dear to me, I understand the process they are facing.

I pray for all of the first responders to this quiet, beautiful little village. They were also brave and selfless and viewed what the rest of us will never have to witness. Thanks to all of them for their quick response.

May the energy and the light of these candles surrounds the grieving parents.

Just now, I can only think of the pain and grief of families in this small Connecticut village. I ask that many prayers be lifted up for all of those affected by this terrible event.

Healing hands bring Divine energy to those in pain.

December 9, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

Happy Hanukkah

This is the festival of lights. Eight nights and eight days that bring us right to the magic and beauty of this festival. It is a holiday of warmth, candlelight, songs, games, presents and delicious foods. It is also the remembrance of the first war for religious freedom.

The Hanukkah menorah, or candle holder, has eight separate places for candles. The flames of the lights must never touch. It also contains one place is for an extra candle called the Shammash. This candle lights all of the others. It combines the earthly strength with heavenly light.

This time of year, Jews are celebrating a battle, fought against the Syrian king Antiochus IV, who was trying to force Jews to worship the Greek gods. A Jewish man and his sons won this battle. Mattathias and his sons were called the Maccabees. They were a small group of men who won the battle against an enormous army from Antiochus. They fought with farm tools, stones,and sticks.

How the Maccabbes actually won is a mystery and magic. They knew Syria much better but they were desperate to fight and save their people and they felt that Adonai was with them. This is a true story of magic and is cherished by the Jewish people.

When the Maccabees returned to Jerusalem, they were looking forward to a celebration and they found the Temple. It was filthy with blood and debris, dirt and ashes. All of the candlesticks, Torahs and books had been stolen.

Most importantly. there was only enough oil for the seven-branched Menorah to burn for one day, when the Menorah was meant to burn continuously, as an eternal light illuminating the way to God. Even worse, it would take eight whole days to make more oil for the lamps . The Jews did the only thing they could think of — they used the last bit of oil. And they prayed. The end of the first day came, and still the lamp burned. The oil kept the lamp alight for a second day, and a third. In all, the oil lasted for eights days and nights, enough time to make more oil. For the Jews, it was a miracle, and that miracle is remembered each year on the eight days of Hanukkah.

Hanukkah means Feast of Dedication, and the Maccabees rededicated the Temple to what is supposed to be. It was a holy place in which to celebrate great days.So each year, we pray, light candles and remember the miracle that happened once a long time ago. Jews laugh, eat, play Dreidle, sing songs and give gifts to others.

The Menorah is lit at nightfall so the lights will shine in the darkness and even the babies will see the ritual. The lights of the menorah are not to work by but to remind everyone of the miracle of the oil. (Source: The Family Treasury of Jewish Holidays by Malka Drucker; Little, Brown and Company”)

A Blessing Over the Candles

“You abound in blessings, Source of Light, Our G-d, Ruler of All Worlds,

Who has made us holy with Your Commandments,

And has commanded us to kindle the festival lights.”

November 21, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

Living in Harmony

We Can All be a Light to Others

Thanksgiving is upon us. A day that Americans remember blessings and those who are no longer with us and…eat too much. This is also a time where we are watching a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel. There are celebrations in the Gaza Strip. What will make this a true cease-fire?

Arabs and Jews must live together in peace. Easy to say. Easy to say when you live across the world from the site of this continuing conflict. Are we each living in harmony with those in our own sphere? Do we show love to those who are different? Will we give thanks to The One for all the people and acquaintances within our spheres?

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and my message for this day, here and around the world, is to look at others and not see different skin color, language, nationality or spiritual path, but to see another child of God. Another being created from Stardust, just as we are. I encourage people to look within and to find the Divine within and then to see the Divine in those around you.

They aren’t a mistake. They are as beloved by The One as you and I are. We need to accept each other as children of the Universe and live in harmony with all. Yes, there are people who have evil intentions, but the number of them compared to those who love the Divine are minimal and we need to send out love into our life sphere, not distrust or hatred.

For Thanksgiving, try loving everyone. Accept them and their differences. Remember they are loved, too, just like you and I are. Stop the judgement and criticizing of people for being different.

May we all live today, tomorrow and always in harmony.