Joy to the world
Maybe it's just the rebound from the virus, (either I've won that battle or the sneaky little bugger is pulling a strategic withdrawal) but I feel terrific today.
Ready to believe that peace, love, and understanding are possibilities, after all.
So, whatever you may want to name this portion of the year, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Harvest festival, I want to wish you all the happiness you can stand. Even more than you feel you deserve, if it comes to that.
Even you, Meighan Pritchard, it's Christmas time, time for me to practice an all-inclusive love for mankind.
Even us dirty old men are capable of that.
You have made it impossible to forget you, so I won't.
So there.
Wherever you are, I'm sending you and yours wishes that whatever you desire in life will be given to you.
Or that you will discover that it is already in you.
Which is the actuality.
That's just the way God made it, so you're going to have to learn to live with it.
Basta! I am back to health and am going to ride today, just a short jaunt, Seward Park and back. Or, who knows, last time I tried that, I ended up riding around the whole lake. Damn near killed myself, didn't I?
So I will now stop talking and start rocking.
'Bye
Ready to believe that peace, love, and understanding are possibilities, after all.
So, whatever you may want to name this portion of the year, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Harvest festival, I want to wish you all the happiness you can stand. Even more than you feel you deserve, if it comes to that.
Even you, Meighan Pritchard, it's Christmas time, time for me to practice an all-inclusive love for mankind.
Even us dirty old men are capable of that.
You have made it impossible to forget you, so I won't.
So there.
Wherever you are, I'm sending you and yours wishes that whatever you desire in life will be given to you.
Or that you will discover that it is already in you.
Which is the actuality.
That's just the way God made it, so you're going to have to learn to live with it.
Basta! I am back to health and am going to ride today, just a short jaunt, Seward Park and back. Or, who knows, last time I tried that, I ended up riding around the whole lake. Damn near killed myself, didn't I?
So I will now stop talking and start rocking.
'Bye
posted by Lane Savant at 10:49 AM
6 Comments:
I googled Ms. Pritchard, and got some hits:
Progress on international debt reduction
Meighan Pritchard and I had a great visit to Representative Barbara Lee’s office on October 17, 2007. After several frustrating weeks trying to grab the attention of the Oakland office staff, our meeting with Saundra Andrews, Director of Constituent Services actually sent us home with the tambourines. Saundra has promised to schedule an on campus (yes - here at PSR) appearance for Representative Lee while she is in the Bay area during the next Congressional break.
That gives our SEWPeace and Peace Week community an opportunity to raise the dual issues of ending funding for the war machine AND raising awareness of the implications of oppressive debt (international as well as domestic). I suggested that Rep. Lee try to schedule her visit for a Tuesday during the lunch hour so that we could have a larger contingent of students, faculty, and staff. We are most likely looking at a date in mid November to early December. I will keep you posted!
The other good news is that the companion Jubilee bill was introduced in the Senate on Tuesday, October 16, 2007
From FOLLOWING CROSSWALK AMERICA;
Meighan Pritchard (Core Walker) - Meighan attends University Congregational United Church of Christ in Seattle, Washington, where she directed the handbell choir for 15 years. For the past five years she worked at Seattle Symphony as the Education and Chorale Coordinator; before that she taught elementary music and has also worked in publishing. She has three cats and a big organic garden, and she loves to make cute outfits for her toddler niece. She plays the hammered dulcimer, flute, handbells, and a bit of piano, and her idea of a good time is to sit around with a group of people and sing/play songs.
She seems to have some association with SIGHTLINE INSTITUTE, and:
Meighan Pritchard Phone: (206) 215-4734 E-mail: meighan.pritchard@seattlesymphony.org (Choruses)
Columbia Choirs "was fantastic! I know our audience members truly enjoyed hearing the excellent tone, intonation, and musicality of your singers. Columbia Choirs (is) providing a great role model and inspiration for children and their parents throughout the Puget Sound area." -- Meighan Pritchard, Seattle Symphony Education Coordinator
random: at clarifying Christian values.
A group, including Meighan Pritchard,
a member of University Congregational
Church, is currently in the midst of a
2,500- mile walk from Phoenix to Washington
D.C., carrying the Phoenix
Affirmations.
The Affirmations, a list of 12 statements
of faith was developed ecumenically
as a means of clarifying beliefs of progress.
Snohomish Children's Choir - TestimonialsI would have no hesitation about asking the Snohomish Children’s Choir perform here again in the future. Bravo! Meighan Pritchard, Seattle Symphony ...
Local woman
joins walk for
new Christian
voice in U.S.
After working five years in the
administration office at the
Seattle Symphony, Meighan
Pritchard, 43, was looking for a new direction
not just in her career, but for her
spiritual life.
When she heard the Rev. Eric Elnes,
senior pastor of Scottsdale (Ariz) Congregational
United Church of Christ,
speak about Crosswalk America at her
home church, Pritchard, a member of
the Congregational Church of Mercer
Island United Church of Christ, found
that direction. It is due east.
In lieu of a regular sermon, we heard a brief talk by Meighan Pritchard, a representative from CrossWalk America, one of many moderate/progressive organizations cropping up in response to the excesses of the Christian Right. It’s an outgrowth of another moderate/progressive organization, No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, which formed in 1998 when a number of Phoenix ministers met at a coffeehouse and decided to speak out against what they regarded as the Christian Right’s cruel and unbiblical bashing of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) persons. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that every new group in possession of a cause must be in want of a manifesto. Thus NLS:CFJ came up with the Phoenix Declaration, which as of December 2004 had been signed by 160 Arizona clergymen and -women.
But NLS:CFJ was, by definition, composed solely of ministers, and the Phoenix Declaration spoke to only a single issue. This year they created a new organization, CrossWalk America, which is open to laypeople and speaks to a broader set of concerns. The basic assumption of both groups is that “moderate and progressive Christians have been overly content to remain silent as fundamentalism has gradually eroded mainstream Christianity in the public sphere. [They] believe it is time to ’stand up and be counted,’ calling the church to be church, in voice and action.”
Yadda, yadda, yadda, it goes on like that ad infinitum, Meighan being physically fit and spiritually "Christian". So anyway, now your readers know a bit more about this "mystery woman".
When Melva and I still attended church, when my daughters were younger, we always heard, "Remember that Christ is the reason for the season". This brings to mind some free verse from the infamous Poet Buttkus:
GOLGATHA
I am the Christ, he whispered,
And they laughed at him;
At his thin unshaven face,
At his long blood-caked hair.
But no one looked at his eyes
The way I did.
He could have told them,
If they would but listen.
He remembered
Antonia,
The cold castle walls
And the cockroaches that chewed his ankles.
The club and the chain,
And the many-tailed whip
That tore hunks of flesh from his body.
Roman guards that had beat him.
Thorns in his hair
Tearing at his scalp.
Men who had feared him,
Pummeled him with their fear,
Blackening his eyes;
Those sad eyes
That see infinity.
Herod was fat, and loved his whores,
and his little boys.
Pilate was lean and he splashed his hands
In a flowered urn as the people
Cheered the thief Barabbas;
Placing a straw basket on his head,
And carrying him on their shoulders,
A frozen smile on his lips,
His liberty barren.
It was a dirty amemic yellow dawn
As Jerusalem reeked of refuse.
He put the rugged cross upon his shoulder;
A huge thing that smelled of creosote and tar and
pitch; fresh cut
Brought from the dark forest,
Bolted together with iron clasps.
The burden was heavy
And he fell under it.
The cobblestone bit into his raw knees.
The whip kissed his scourged back
As he stood up.
The sky appeared dead.
The narrow streets were open cesspools
In the dim light,
Rubbish in rainbarrols,
Gutters that rannith over with filth.
People leaned out windows
And spit, though some did not.
Come see the parade,
it is free, like hunger.
And the people came,
An army of shopkeepers, drunkards, farmers, artisans,
whores, pick-pockets, thieves, cutthroats, lepers, and
rabbis,
Huddling, steaming, and shuffling,
As dirty children played tag with the rats.
Another painful stumble at the corner crossroads,
flat onto the hard street,
But this time gentle hands reached out to him
And a negro named Simon stepped up
To help shoulder the burden,
And although conscripted, he too
was whipped and beaten as the procession continued.
His mother was there, somewhere,
in that sea of whirling souls,
Though he had missed her at the trial.
Porta Judiciarn, a Roman gate,
Stone and ornate,
Marble and impressive.
Then Calvary at noon,
A sickly place, stinking of carrion and death;
Golgatha, the place of skulls.
The crowd jeered and bellered and wept.
Dysmas and Gestas sweated,
Watching the crosses being arranged on the ground.
The four corners of the world heaved,
Black clouds raced for the hillock,
A pallid ring hid the desert sun,
Noon and dark.
Pain hid the rising,
Sharp white silhouettes against the indigo sky,
Yet the iron spikes still hurt
As the flesh split, cracked, and crunched
In his hands and feet.
Jesus of Nazareth,
King of the Jews,
Words on a hand-written wooden sign,
Nailed lop-sided over his drooping head.
The spikes were thick and cold,
And blood flowed,
Slowly trickling down,
Spiraling around his body
And the cross.
Little red rivelets of life
in a rubious world;
Becoming a steaming puddle
On the bare trodden ground.
I thirst, he cried,
And they sponged his swollen face
With vinegar,
While the black sky brooded,
His crown catching the light on a barb.
Whispered words with his father,
Dice that rolled,
Winners that did not win.
4:00, Good Friday, April 7th, 30 A.D.;
A scratch on eternity,
A wound that never heals,
Bleeding still,
Becoming words that will not clot,
From a Christ,
And from all men suffering,
And not suffering.
My God, My God,
Why have you forsaken me ?
Glenn Buttkus
Easter 1966
How insightful, Lane, that you told Meighan, "Whatever you desire in life will be given to you; or that you will discover that it is already in you. Which is the actuality."
That is very Gnostic of you, Doug. I am proud of your heart and mind. God is, after all, inside all of us, and that is precisely the point of all the religious jabber and warring and dispute. God does not speak just one language, and does not reside in one house, or one faith. The answer to all the problems of this world, and they are legion, is an "inside job".
It is certainly a fine day for a bike ride. Hopefully you and Fidelio wheeled into some small warmth and adventure that you will share with us later.
Glenn
Lover Boy:
I hate Ms. Meighan for what she has done to your soul, and to your heart. She has even effected your fine compositions and your sterling perception of music.
It may please you, or not, but I haunt her, in her dreams; and sometimes even in her waking state. She attributes it to demonology, and retreats behind her cruxifix, and her faith. That is how little she understands about "true love". I will continue to "devil" her until she comes to her senses, which is doubtful, or until you tell me to stop; which I may not heed since I have my dander up and my petticoats in a bunch.
So it will be January before the world hears the genius of Doug Palmer in public. I guess I can wait until then. I have waited centuries already just for you, and your love.
Emily
When I was an airdale at NAS Miramar in 1967, there were terrible fires all over Southern California. I was touched by their tragedy and inevitability. So I wrote a poem. Reviewing it, it could be every bit as relevant today as then. You judge:
S O D O M
There is a fire in the mountains.
The desert is covered with a black fog.
A roaring crackling snarling thing
that devours its way through the lushness of green-brown,
burning and burning,
choking the air with cinders and sparks.
Sagebrush afire,
vermin fleeing,
whole towns gutted,
rag-dolls and mansions,
horses and fallow hay,
all burned,
blister and char.
People standing and praying,
horns blasting.
Firefighters with watery weary eyes
and hard soot-smeared faces,
and big shovels,
hearing the screams in the moment,
and for an eternity of moments.
A whole countryside burning
under clear skies with blood on the sun;
and the creatures struggling in the hellish haze,
watching toil turn to ash,
raise their collective eyes to the dark clouds above;
fire clouds,
and beyond,
and they see nothing;
no rain,
no golden thrones.
Glenn Buttkus 1967
Emily, have a heart...Oh sorry..
You remember your heart, though, don't you?
Anyway, remember that it is better to absorb the hatred of others than to hold the ugly stuff in your own heart.
Not to be disrespecting your meatless condition, but where do you hold the stuff anyway?
As far as haunting goes, you're dead, thats your job. Keep up the good work.
Love....Lane
Dougie Dearest:
How naive you are, and how wonderfully romantic and endearing. Here in that other state, beyond the veil, in the cosmic dimensional shift, in the forever country...I am just fine. What I perceive is a body, with flesh, sort of, and organs. I do not get hungry, and still I eat for the pleasure of it. I do not need sex, but I remember the pleasure and the pain of it. What I can fixate on is LOVE, that eternal quality that man, as an entity, has the capacity to project beyond time, beyond consciousness.
Last year your messages of affection, and then adoration and love began to come to me, to come to my consciousness. We all watch you folks, peer into your busy lives. It is like universal television. It entertains us, breaks our hearts, warms our cockels, and frizzes our hair. Remember that your spirit, your power as an entity exists in several dimensions simultaneously. In a parallel dimension for instance you already are a renown composer and musician, and Butch is a well respected published writer in one, and a movie star in the other. You and he have a connection that goes back several lifetimes. You were in Scotland together, warriors with William Wallace. You have both been women, been black, been Oriental, been aboriginals. You bravely labor away daily in lesson, and hopefully you are "learning", and seeking for answers, for your version of the big "truth" of things. This, of course, will be very clear to you when you pass over, went you lounge in Bardo reviewing your past life, and past lives. Butch already understands this. I will be there to meet you. I have always been there for you.
As to the haunting, damn rights that is my job, and I am good at it. Ms. Meighan really does not know who she is messing with. I will not push her into a babbling bundle of insanity, but I will allow her to retreat deep within her faith to protect herself. She enjoys and expects this of her life anyway; so short sighted, so provincial, so one dimensional.
Love: Your Emily
Lane:
Some people/things are better forgotten.
-- Anonomann
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