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Wednesday, November 18, 2015

A Message to the Bible Belt



A message to the Bible Belt:



Compassion is always, always, always risky.

If you fear risk, you have no compassion.

A theorem: 

Generally, how much a state's citizens 
claim to follow Jesus 
is directly proportional to how much 
that state refuses Jesus' basic teachings. 

Anybody who cracks a Bible 
may judge whether or not this observation is true.

Yes, it's understandably risky 
to help a person 
on the side of a terrorist-infested road.

And it's often only a person 
of another, despised religion (Samaritan) 
who's willing to help,

which some homeless radical 
(you may have heard of him) 
very purposefully pointed out 
to those of his own Bible religion 
(Luke 10:25-32).


Monday, November 02, 2015

To Answer My Accusers: You're Right, I Have Not Earned Anything

To answer my accusers: you're right, I have not earned anything.

I did not earned any clothes I wear, any food I eat, all gleaned from massive heaps thrown away.

I did not earn the sunlight or the communal air giving us all energy and life.

I did not earn my mother's love.
Neither can I ever pay her back.


Now, I ask you: have you earned anything?

Have you earned anything you purchased at Walmart?

Did America's wealthiest family, the Walton family, earn its $149 billion "net worth"? (Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/profile/walton-1/)



Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Persecution Complex, Wealth, and Religion

It may be time to start blogging regularly again.
Before getting started, sharing this video is a must:


Some of the most generous people I know have no money
1 minute of wise words from part 1 of the brilliant 3-part film HUMAN. Watch it here: http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/human/
Posted by Films For Action on Monday, October 19, 2015




Adapting To My New Life

It's taken me a while to adapt to my new life of living with and caring for my aging parents, living with compromise.

It's taken me a while to fully realize how precious a privilege this is.
Front yard of my outdoor home at the Colorado River.
(I snagged this pic taken by my friend Amber Stone)

Yes, I'm still living with my parents in their house, part time. Part time means I also have a camp near the Colorado River, to help me not lose touch with the realworld.

Ironically, though I still do not have, take or use money, I keep my parents' financial books, and I help my dad with shopping. And, of course, we live in a house owned and provided by my wealthy uncle (and, yes, I am grateful for his generosity), utilities paid through my parents' social security, which I would otherwise choose not to live under.

We could totally live well on scavenged & home-grown food alone, but it's hardly possible to get two 88-year-olds to fully agree to that. But, amazingly, unlike most 88-year-olds, they gladly and wholeheartedly eat the bulk of their diet from my scavenging & home gardening. And I love to cook. Cooking is a forte of mine.

There are lots going on around Fruita with prime friends, as well as family, I'd like to talk about in future posts. In the mean time, I have other things to share.

After many months of feeling dried up, I have been experiencing epiphanies the past few weeks. I have posted some on facebook, and I'm sharing them with you here:

Musings on the Persecution Complex



Overcoming
the taste of Death

All of us, without exception,
will give up all our possessions,
voluntarily or involuntarily,
and return to our nativity, the earth.

There is no taste of death (no sense of loss)
if we do it voluntarily.

Voluntarily means doing exactly what we want,
not because we have to.

You have only 2 immutable choices:

Give it up because you have to,

or give it up because you don't have to.

When we don't voluntarily give up possessions,
we identify with them,
we think they are our selves.
We say "thank you" when somebody compliments our possessions.
And we are offended when somebody insults our possessions.

Most of all, we think any challenge to our possessions is persecution,
even if it is simple suggestion of sharing.

When our possessions, our whole identity, is challenged,
we live in fear, fear of persecution.

Beliefs we cling to are no less our possessions.
Our most cherished religious beliefs are possessions, dogmas.

A challenge to our dogmas is perceived as persecution.

Paradoxically, if we are to find the truth of our religion,
we must give up all possessions.

That includes all beliefs we cling to.

Paradoxically, only then can we understand faith
when there is nothing more to cling to,
nothing more to possess.

There is then only the unseen, the un-thought.

When there is no more possession,
there is no more loss,
meaning there is

no more taste of death.

Immortality is freedom from possession.

The Persecution Complex
of the Dominant Religion

I grew up white Evangelical.
I sincerely believed we were the persecuted minority,
all outsiders our enemy.

http://www.pewforum.org/2014/09/22/section-1-religion-in-public-life/


The Persecution Complex 
of the Dominant Social Class®

Please, let's take a moment of silence® to contemplate the suffering of this persecuted minority®. Don't be afraid to cry®.
Let it all® out.

A religiously Right® chap recently posted on Facebook® that people who speak ill of amassing wealth® are just jealous.

This is why we® recommend editing© the most blatant wealth bashers, like Jesus Christ and Apostle James, right out of our Bible© (see below),
and we® need to excommunicate all of the early church fathers and mothers, who unanimously bashed accumulation of wealth® (see below)

Then we® can finally enjoy the blessings® of trickle-down™ warm golden liquid®.



The Golden Rule & the Persecution Complex

Yes, droves of people in this world think they are the persecuted minority.

I had an epiphany just the other day while hiking the canyons, about the Golden Rule:
"You always do unto others
as you would have others do unto you."
Duh! This is not a command!
Love can't be commanded.
There can be no grace in commandment.


It is a statement,
and not necessarily a positive statement.

This Golden Rule is a law, the social manifestation of the law of physics:
"For every force there is an equal and opposite force, simultaneously."
The law of physics is not a command.
All of us follow this law whether we hate people or love people!

The Golden Rule is the Mother of all laws.

When I love people, I want and have love for myself, and vise versa.
Self-love is light, self-dissolving into all, aware of others.

When I have a persecution complex, I hate myself,
and I persecute others unawares, and vise versa,
and I want to be persecuted.

Self-hate is self-absorption, blindness, unaware of others.

And guess what?
I looked up "Love your neighbor as yourself" in the Hebrew Torah
[Leviticus 19:18, Young's Literal Translation, plus Hebrew text].
Indeed, literally it is not a command, not imperative tense.
It simply describes what is!
"You always love your neighbor as you love yourself."
Simply describing what is brings light to what is.
All resolves itself in the light, which does not command, does not force, does not control.

In the light all that is illusion vanishes, all that is real remains.

This is the Tao

The Broken Spirit Behind the Machinery 
of "Free Market" Capitalism
If our spirit (empathy) has been broken through abuse, we become machines without empathy, and we want to deregulate unfeeling machineryand we want to regulate life.
"Free market" is an oxymoron.
Free means no money.

"Free market" is called "laissez faire economy."
This is Orwellian doublethink.

Laissez faire means "let it be" or "hands off".


Natural ecology is the only balanced
laissez faire economy.

Laissez faire is impossible in a money economy,
as history never ceases to show us,

because the very nature of money is control of the balance of positive and negative, credit and debt.

True laissez faire, in fact, is the philosophy of living without money.

Invention of money is loss of faith
in the laws of physics and ecology,
fall from grace, fall from gratis.

True laissez faire is faith in the very law of physics and ecology:
For every negative there is always an equal positive.
For every credit there is an equal simultaneous debt.
All life is already balanced - we've just become blind to this.

You can try laissez faire for machinery or
you can have laissez faire for life.

You must choose one. You can't have both.

You can serve (work for) money or
you can serve (work for) life.

It is impossible to do both.

The market is a machine, without empathy.
Machinery has no morality, no life, to self-regulate.

Ecology is life, whose essence is empathy.
Empathy is self-regulating morality.

Life has already regulated itself for eons
and undomesticated life already regulates itself in balance
as we observe all around us.

Those who deregulate machinery must regulate living beings.
Those who deregulate living beings must regulate machinery.

None of us wants to be regulated ourselves,
We all want laissez faire for ourselves.

So we deregulate what is like ourselves,
and we regulate what is unlike ourselves.

If our spirit (empathy) has been broken through abuse,
we become machines without empathy,
and we want to deregulate unfeeling machinery
and we want to regulate life,

and we regard empathy as silly naivete.

If our spirit triumphs through abuse,
we become life, compassionate,
and we want to deregulate life
and regulate the machinery 
that would otherwise regulate and abuse life,

and we regard empathy as the essence of life.


When we have life, machinery serves us.
When our spirit is broken, we serve machinery.

Laissez faire of life is the spiritual concept
that all life balances itself outside our control

(Like "Tao" in eastern tradition, "Grace" in western).

Attempting laissez faire of machinery is materialistic
(materialistic means matter without empathy),
In other words, deregulating machinery is based on desire to regulate nature,
based on the concept that nature needs our control;
It is based on our loss of faith that the laws of physics and ecology actually work.

"Free market" capitalists hijack such profound spiritual concepts for marketing purposes.
They have hijacked religion, as they hijack music, art, food, and all life, stripping it all of empathy.

Money has upset the balance of ecology.

True laissez faire can only work for life, not money.

It's the same principle as a tight rope walker losing balance when consciously trying to control balance, when the left hand tries to know what the right hand is doing, not letting it be.

Hot off the press!

OUR FAITH® & OUR WORLD-DOMINATING EMPIRE® UNDER PERSECUTION
BY A HOMELESS BUM 
& HIS EARLY FOLLOWERS!





"COMMUNISM:
1 a : a theory advocating 
elimination of private property

b : a system in which goods 
are owned in common and 
are available to all as needed"
(Webster's Dictionary)


"Now all who believed were together, 
and had all things in common,
and sold their possessions and goods, 
and divided them among all, 
as anyone had need."
(The Bible, Acts 2:44-45)


"Now the multitude 
of those who believed 
were of one heart and one soul; 
neither did anyone say 
that any of the things he possessed 
was his own, 
but they had all things in common."
(Acts 4:32)

Confirmed by our® witnesses:

"Christians despise all possessions
and share them communally"
--Lucian of Samosata (c. 125-180 CE)
Assyrian Pagan Author


List of the 
WANTED
For Sedition Against Our Empire®:

Jesus Christ
(from a painting in Rome, 530 CE)



"One thing you lack:
Go your way,
sell whatever you have
and give to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven;
and come, take up the cross, and follow me.". . . .

It is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God."
(Jesus, Mark 10:21, 25)

So then, none of you can be my disciple
who does not give up all his own possessions.
(Jesus, Luke 14:33)

Iacov
(James,
brother of Jesus)



Listen, my beloved brethren:
Has not God chosen the poor of this world
to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom
which he promised to those who love him?
But you have dishonored the poor man.
Do not the rich oppress you
and drag you into the courts?
Do they not blaspheme
that Noble Name by which you are called?. . . .

Come now, you rich,
weep and howl for your miseries
that are coming upon you!
Your riches are corrupted,
and your garments are moth-eaten.
Your gold and silver are corroded,
and their corrosion will be a witness against you
and will eat your flesh like fire.
You have heaped up treasure in the last days.
Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields,
which you kept back by fraud, cry out;
and the cries of the reapers
have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury;
you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter.
You have condemned,
you have murdered the just; he does not resist you.
(James 2:5-7 & 5:1-6)

Augustine


"Those who wish to make room for the Lord
must find pleasure not in private,
but in common property….

Redouble your charity.
For, on account of the things
which each one of us possesses singly,
wars exist, hatreds, discords, strifes
among human beings, tumults, dissensions,
scandals, sins, injustices, and murders.
On what account?
On account of those things
which each of us possesses singly.
Do we fight over the things we possess in common?
We inhale this air in common with others,
we all see the sun in common.
Blessed therefore are those who make room for the Lord,
so as not to take pleasure in private property.
Let us therefore abstain from the possessions of private property—
or from the love of it, if we cannot abstain from possession—
and let us make room for the Lord."
(Augustine, 354–430 CE)

Basil
the Great


"You are like one occupying a place in a theater,
who should prohibit others from entering,
treating that as one’s own
which was designed for the common use of all.
Such are the rich.
Because they were first to occupy common goods,
they take these goods as their own.
If each one would take that which is sufficient for one’s needs,
leaving what is in excess to those in distress,
no one would be rich, no one poor."
(Basil the Great, 329–379 CE)



Teresa de Ávila


"Thank God for the things that I do not own."
(Teresa of Ávila, 1515-1582)










Justin Martyr


“We who once took most pleasure
in the means of increasing our wealth and property
now bring what we have into a common fund
and share with everyone in need.”
(Justin Martyr, 100-165 CE)







Irenaeus

“And instead of the tithes which the law commanded,
the Lord said to divide everything we have with the poor.
And he said to love not only our neighbors but also our enemies,
and to be givers and sharers
not only with the good
but also to be liberal givers
toward those who take away our possessions.”
(Irenaeus, 130-200 CE)





Clement of
Alexandria


“Private property is the fruit of iniquity.
I know that God has given us the use of goods,
but only as far as is necessary;
and he has determined that the use shall be common.
The use of all things that are found in this world
ought to be common to all men.
Only the most manifest iniquity
makes one say to another,
‘This belongs to me, that to you.’
Hence the origin of contention among men.”
(Clement of Alexandria, 150-215 CE)

Tertullian



“We who share one mind and soul

obviously have no misgivings
about community of goods.”
(Tertullian, 160-225 CE)







Ambrose


“Nature has poured forth all things
for the common use of all people.
And God has ordained that all things should be produced
that there might be food in common for all,
and that the earth should be the common possession of all.
Nature created common rights,
but usurpation has transformed them into private rights…
God gave the same earth to be cultivated by all.
Since, therefore, His bounty is common,
how is it that you have so many fields,
and your neighbor not even a clod of earth?”
(Ambrose of Milan, 340-397 CE)

John Chrysostom

“The rich are in possession of the goods of the poor,
even if they have acquired them honestly
or inherited them legally.”
“Not to enable the poor to share in our goods
is to steal from them and deprive them of life.
The goods we possess are not ours but theirs.”
(John Chrysostom, 347-407 CE)






Gregory
of Nyssa



"We are all the same family:
all of us are brothers and sisters.
And among brethren it is best and most equal
that all inherit equal portions.”
(Gregory of Nyssa, 330-395 CE)











Cyprian


"They think of themselves as owners,
whereas it is they rather who are owned:
enslaved as they are to their own property,
they are not the masters of their money but its slaves.”
(Cyprian, 200-258 CE)







Cyril
of Alexandria

“Give away these earthly things,
and win that which is in heaven.
Give that which you must leave,
even against your will,
that you may not lose things later.
Lend your wealth to God,
that you may be really rich.
Concerning the way in which to lend it,
Jesus next teaches us saying:
‘Sell your possessions, and give alms,
provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old,
with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail’
(Cyril of Alexandria, 378-444 CE)


The Didache:
The Teachings of
the Twelve Apostles

“Share everything with your brother.
Do not say, ‘It is private property.’
If you share what is everlasting,
you should be that much more willing
to share things which do not last.”
(The Didache 4:8, c. 90 CE)







Pray for Your Holy Empire® Under Attack!

"Fighting & Civilizing, 
Refining & Repackaging
Indigenous Peoples!

Co-opting & Marketing 
Spiritual Traditions
For Your Security!"™

New!
Fun Size!Slick Disposable Packaging!

Do not purchase if Seal is broken.


Your Trademark
 of Monetary Empire®
for over Seven Millenia:

Facing both Right and Left
for your baffling entertainment!
Empire of Rome® 
Empire of America®

Holy Roman Empire®, Russian Empire®, Turkish Empire®.
Austrian Empire®, Byzantine Empire®, Albanian Empire®
Family Owned & Operated
Since Our Humble Beginnings
in c. 5500 BC!
Empire of Sumer
(Babel)
®
Empire of the Aryans of India®
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Empire of USSR®
Empire of China®
Empire of Fascism®
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Empire of Israel®

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Transitioning to a New Life


Yes, I'm still alive.  Yes, it's been over 4 months since I blogged.

I've been clueless what to say.

My life has gone through huge upheaval.

Four months ago, my mom contacted me.  She said she and my dad were becoming unable to fully care for themselves, and they didn't want to go into assisted living.  Neither did I want them to go into assisted living.  


How can living without money include ditching our parents and grandparents to a system of paid assisted living?  How can it include trashing what has been basic family responsibility for thousands of years?  My parents didn't question taking care of their grandparents and parents.  And my parents took care of me.  Now it's my turn.  

So I instantly dropped my whole life in Moab and my life on the road.

So here I be, in Fruita, Colorado.

Honestly, this has been one of the hardest things I've ever done, letting go of attachment to freedom from attachments, 
leaving friends behind, ditching plans & expectations I had for the coming year and beyond.  Forget plans for moneyless community, projects, activism, travel, spiritual retreats in the wilderness, freedom.  I've had to make lots of room for compromise.   

But I realized this is what my path is all about, giving up all possessions, attachments, expectations, including my attachments to ideals.  Find contentment and consistency in spirit in the hardest obstacle course of all, the biological family!    

When all possessions are given up, can there be greater triumph and freedom?  I'm finally coming to the point of fully embracing the hand life is dealing me.  As I get past the intense burden of old family repeating patterns, I'm realizing the richness of connecting with my parents at a deeper level, of love, as they face their final days.

This has been my big test.  Wandering without money in the middle of nowhere is child's play compared to this.

It's testing my ego.  There is no glory in doing this.  Notoriety I've experienced the past years has been going flat.  Media has no interest in this (which, in a lot of ways, is a relief). There's not much for me to blog about, so I've thought.  Hence, my  silence of 4 months.



Am I still living without money?


On the brighter side, I love my parents dearly and we have a good relationship.  But it's still incredibly difficult for anybody being with mom & dad again after decades of independence.  And I have difficulty with old religious patterns.

But their relationship with each other, and their love and thoughtfulness toward me and my friends is incredibly beautiful.  



But, yes, I am having to make compromises in my moneyless lifestyle.  

I still am not taking or using money for myself, and I still have no identification documents.  I still scavenge food as much as I can.  But I share meals with my parents, much bought with their limited Social Security income, and I use utilities in the house, albeit as sparingly as possible.  I have set up a camp at the river with a friend, but I still must stay at my parents' house a lot of the time.  And I might have to get a drivers license since my dad is losing his ability to drive and my mom can no longer drive.  


And, lo and behold, my parents are handing over their financial bookkeeping to me.  Yes, to a man who hasn't balanced a checkbook in 15 years, much less used money!  I also do yard work on a ridiculous lawn and other classically suburban silliness I don't fully jive with.  

But I have planted a garden in the back, growing potatoes, corn, lentils, squash, peppers, tomatoes, cantaloupes, watermelons, lettuce.  Besides my letting the wild, edible purslane and goosefoot grow voluntarily, my garden isn't exactly permaculture, but it sure beats cultivating a useless patch of lawn in a desert landscape!   

My brother, Ron, is also here, at least temporarily, so it seems.  He has a disability, but does what he can to help out.  I am also gaining deeper levels of relationship with him.

My nephew, Justin, and his wife, Mandy, live a few blocks away from here.  Justin made the video of my parents a couple months ago.  If you've read The Man Who Quit Money, you might recognize much of this story in it, straight from the horse's mouth!




New Treasure Trove of Friends in Fruita

When I had thought there wasn't anything in Fruita for me, I discovered treasured friends and community in Fruita, hiding in the woodwork.  As time goes, I'd like to talk more about them.


Yes, I have one of my best friends, Cullen, here in Fruita.  We discovered each other a couple years ago, actually.   


Here is a teaser of what Cullen has been working on for over a year.  A modern Leonardo Da Vinci, Cullen is a genius, artistic at everything he touches. And this is a work of love, not commerce, the impetus of his life. Thus, I prefer him to any commercial producer & am infinitely grateful.  He's submitted it to the Telluride Film Festival, so it probably won't be available to the general public for some time:




New Wilderness Enclave and a New Friend in Town

I've tried staying indoors here, but it has felt quite oppressive, with major insomnia, so a few weeks ago I went exploring and was elated to find beautiful camping near by.  

My first night camping out I slept deeply for the first time in months.  I awoke feeling intensely grateful.  I said to myself, "I think I'm ready to host visitors again, and maybe even form a little moneyless enclave here!"  I kid you not, like a sign dropped from the sky, the very next day I got a call at my parents from a guy I'd never talked to before named Geryn, aka "G", asking if he could stay with me!  He had just arrived in Fruita on his bicycle.


G seems just as gung ho about this budding little enclave by the river as I do.  Okay, I must mention that it's refreshing that G is exotic.  He's a a dread-locked black dude, 30ish, whose childhood and family roots was in Trinidad



Flesh & Blood Distress

This has been another reason I haven't been motivated to continue publicizing my life to the world.

But now I've decided it's important to publish a bit of ugliness in my life under the "April 5th" heading below.


So the nation has made a historical jump in accepting gay people, and most of my friends are okay with my being gay, not even thinking twice about it.  Such is not the case with some family members (in another state) & their church cronies.  It's been sometimes hard resisting falling back into the hopeless distress & feeling of isolation I felt decades ago.  Although I feel completely confident in accepting who I am, it's just not easy when some of your own flesh and blood can have their flesh and blood hearts hardened harder than concrete by the letter of religion.

The greatest enemy of Christianity is not Muslims, not Atheists, not hedonists and political tyrants, but self-proclaimed fundamentalist Christians.  It is only when I am dealing with them that I start feeling that faith is worthless and destructive, that there is no greater reason to be an atheist.  This is when I must go away from people and simply hang out in the wilderness, where all is divine, all is its own evidence, where no words, no arguments, no self-proclamations are needed.


See the April 5th heading below.

If you care to read further:


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chronological Facebook posts


Okay, I've decided to just cut & paste facebook posts of the last few months to give a chrony summary.

March 17  Moab, UT   We're bred to be perpetual babies




I can't help but observe: Domestic animals are bred to never grow up, to fulfill the desires of the human ego. Experiments show that domesticating wild animals brings on traits of babies (floppy ears, spotted coats, curled tails, perpetually submissive behavior). Humans in civilization as we know it are also bred to never grow up, not trusted to be adults and take care of themselves. Wild creatures have the right to grow to adulthood. They need no permission to act, trusted to govern themselves, despite having brains much smaller than ours. But domestic humans and animals are denied the right to grow up. Does this correlate with epidemic mental illness in both domestic animals and humans?


March 21 · Moab, UT   Evicted from my camp

I've been evicted again! I just got word yesterday somebody turned me into the authorities, so I cleaned out my camp & missed the 1st Annual Tipipalooza last night (I heard it exceedingly exceeded awesomeness expectations).The past weeks it has felt everything has gone eerily wrong, one thing after another! Last night I was dwelling on this, how utterly unjust our system is, but then had an instantaneous switch-a-roo. "I am liberated!" I hollered ecstatically as I cleaned out the camp and got rid of months of accumulated stuff from myself and many visitors.Needless to say, I love visitors, but you can't stay with me - you gotta figure out your own accommodations. And don't bring me anything, please. And pack out everything you come with. One day, perhaps a moneyless tribe will be possible. Right now all is up in the air.

March 24 · Moab, UT  Edible Elm Seeds!

Treasures are right under (or above) our noses, local, strong & wild or feral. Elm trees are seeding now, even before leafing! Last year Cody James let me know they are edible! Though still green, they're even now edible & delicious, even with the tender husks! Last year, I winnowed & ground dry ripe ones & made amazingly delicious pancakes & waffles, tasting like buckwheat. My parents even loved them. Elm seeds are crazy abundant, easier to harvest & winnow than wheat, and I've a hunch they're a complete or near-complete protein. And you don't have to wait for autumn to harvest them, no tilling, no coaxing them to grow! A permaculture wonder! I've an inkling the whole Moab population could be fed with them. Perhaps they could become a staple crop around the world!

March 27 · Durango, CO   Podcast

(Matt Dooley's post)

The first episode from the Quillcast with Matt Dooley. Daniel Suelo and Ande Lloyd , who does a great job interviewing Daniel and narrating!
Podcast, Animas High School in Durango, 
"Grades, Money, And Me"

March 28   From Moab to Fruita 

Friends bringing me back to Fruita, Colo. to be with my parents. Perhaps a big change in my life. Life's about giving up all expectations & attachments & completely embracing what comes. My 87-year-old parents and I don't want them in a nursing home, and I cringe at the thought of somebody paid to do what has been basic family responsibility for thousands of years. What this means for a guy who quit money & all forms of ID remains to be seen.
Thank you Steven Loggins for so enthusiastically bringing me here, and thanks, Hannah, Ariella, & Stephanie Raven for accompanying us here. My parents were grateful & overjoyed by your presence, my friends. And Thanks, Stephanie Raven, for taking these pics (Hannah didn't want to be photographed). 
(pics by Stephanie Raven Summerfield)

Laurel, Stephanie, Ron, Richard, Ariella, Steven






Steven, Suelo, Ariella
Suelo, Steven

March 29 Fruita, CO   The Highest Ideal -  Mark Boyle's perfect response to my deciding to compromise and care for my parents.


"One of my highest ideals is to live without money, but it is only trumped by the highest ideal of all: to act with love in every single situation, and the complexities of it." -- Mark Boyle


April 5 Fruita, CO  On Being Gay

I usually only post gift economy stuff, not usually so vocal about being gay. But lately I'm realizing if I don't stand tall in the light with my full person, who will for me? These gay posts don't get many hits, because the majority naturally isn't so interested in minority issues. But I still gotta stand even when I feel like crying.Someone in my family (XXX) keeps posting things such as the following from a recent thread. Though it doesn't shake my peace in who I am, it hurts like a knife because this person is family, and this person's opinion is rampant in the US. I've decided it's beneficial to post this person's comments anonymously as XXX. I've left out others' interjections:
XXX states:
"I've got a genetic predisposition for being a hothead. In fact, there have been some people I would have liked to put out of their misery. Nevertheless, I refused to act on my impulses. My genetic predisposition is not my preference. Refraining from murdering someone is my preference. Others have preferred to murder. They are sitting behind bars right now. Science has found no homosexual gene. Therefore, they cannot rely on genetic predisposition for their condition. Nevertheless, I'll give homosexuals the benefit of the doubt and allow that they are intrinsically homosexual and that it is not their preference. However, acting on the impulse is certainly a preference. When we give in to our impulses, we are doing what we prefer to do. It's time for all of us to take responsibility for our actions."
"Does the homosexual prefer heterosexuality rather than what he is predisposed to? Or is it really that he prefers society to accept the homosexuality he is very happy to be predisposed to have, so he can act on his impulses without the repercussions? In other words he doesn't prefer heterosexuality, but no repercussions for what he loves."
"Suddenly their "personal" choices have gotten into the public square and legal system and are imposed on whoever doesn't agree with them. THEIR "personal" choices have now become a personal matter to us!""It harms the gay person themselves when they act out on it. Are they not important too? Why hide the facts from them and let them go on in self-destructive delusion? They harm us by imposing destructive laws on us. They harm the children they raise. The studies are coming in on that fact."
"They perpetuate harmful diseases"
"They also die younger."
"Immorality of any flavor perpetuates destructive consequences."
"Biblical laws against immorality were given as a protective fence to keep us safe, not make us miserable!"
MY INTERJECTION UPON DISCOVERING THIS THREAD:
SUELO:"I am gay... I do have an agenda, to be accepted for who I am, not to impose my ways on anybody else, even though heterosexuals have vehemently tried to impose their ways on us gay people all my life, make us all like them, which is impossible. And I find it disgusting to have who I am lumped in with murderers.
"And, xxx, if you chose to be celibate and by yourself without intimacy most your life, then you might have a little more understanding and credibility to set yourself up as judge to prescribe celibacy and lack of intimacy on somebody else. My lifestyle imposes absolutely nothing on you or anybody, harms nobody and is absolutely none of yours or anybody else's business. Not that it's any of your damned business, but I likely have had less sex and less intimacy than any person posting here who sets yourself up as judge to prescribe how I should live. Though totally not your business, I say this to make a point."
"...most every gay person I know of my generation did not want to be gay, and, if given the choice, we would have been straight. We were in a society that constantly told us that being gay was worse than murder.
"But after years of self-loathing and spiritual seeking, I realized we can't be pleasers of people, and we cannot covet what does not belong to us, and we must fully accept what God, yes God, has given us, even if, yes, our own families demonize it. I realized that nothing trumps love, and "love does no harm to her neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." I rest on that, not on xxx's opinion. And nothing else can give me such overwhelming peace."
XXX:"Who says it's not anybody's business? Prove it does not harm anyone."
"The science is against you."
"Your lifestyle has affected thousands, Daniel, because you have spent your life devising a made up religion to justify it!"
SUELO:"I have nothing to prove. I am who I am, and can be nothing else."
XXX:"Well, then, if you can make declarations with nothing to support them, so can anyone. You are not god over us."
"If you can do as you please with no repercussions, so can the rest of us."
"Life is a free-for-all."
"May the strongest and biggest con-man win--which is how it goes. The most wicked power-mongers conquer and win, for power and control. Your religion does not provide a solution for that, because it is not only against nature, it is against God.""It is built on false and contradictory assumptions."
"The gay lifestyle IS harmful, to yourself and to others. It IS trespassing, against society, even if society accepts it. It IS perpetuating disease, broken families, broken hearts, as all immorality does. Yes, we all accept our sinful condition, admit this IS the way we are, and then find Grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you cling to your self-righteousness, you will go away a sinner and die in your sins. It is the sick that will meet the Physician, not those that (think) they have no need of a Physician. I don't care if the whole world and my entire family praise you and lift you up as righteous, and the whole world condones the homosexual lifestyle. I will stay the course and NOT enable you. This is because I DO love you and care for your soul. " 
"In case we don't get the picture yet, God also specifies:"Leviticus 20:13 'If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.'"


April 24 Trip back to Moab (pics by Stephanie Raven Summerfield)



Pete, Cullen, Suelo
Looking over Moab


April 28 Fruita, CO      On Being in Debt

Consider this deeply: 
Everything in life confirms to me that
NOBODY CAN EVER PAY FOR ANYTHING! 
There are no debts to pay, no guilt to requite, ever. 
Guilt is debt is guilt is debt. 
See a problem, fix it. But if you see it as a debt to pay, you're stuck in painful delusion, creating cycles of never-ending debt. 
See a person harming you, address the behavior as a problem to simply fix. But if you see the person as guilty, to be blamed and punished, you're stuck in painful delusion, creating cycles of never-ending guilt and blame. Never ending vengeance, pay-back.
Money clouds our vision of this most basic truth, which is why most everybody reading this will likely disagree, initially. 
The same applies to credit as to debt. See a person doing good to you. Freely accept it as gift, not payment or a debt to be repayed, then both you and the giver have joy. But if you feel too proud to take a gift, or you take it weighed down by a sense of debt (guilt), you deny both yourself and the giver joy, you are stuck in painful delusion, creating cycles of never-ending credit and debt. 
When a river over-runs its banks and floods a village, the fool beats the water with a club to punish it. The wise person simply builds a dike, with no sense of punishment. 
Isn't our entire culture, from top to bottom, stuck in painful delusion, creating cycles of never-ending credit and debt? Our economic, judicial, political, and religious systems, and our entertainment, as well as our social and personal behaviors are all one thing. To fix one is to fix all. 
U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time


May 1 Fruita, CO        Birthday Mysticism

"This ol' body has made its 54th time around the sun!
OK, don't laugh. Sometimes I turn into a crazy numerologist. Maybe ego fishing for importance & order in a seemingly random, chaotic world.
Earlier today I thought how number 54 felt boring and insignificant.
Yet my life feels so frazzled these days, like a cycle ended.
Then a couple hours ago the Rosary flashed into my mind (though I'm not of Roman Catholic culture):
54 beads complete the Rosary's circle.
That's half of the 108 beads of Eastern prayer mala (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, etc).
Now this gets intriguing (at least to me :-)  ).
Is it coincidence that the sine of the 54 degree angle is half the golden ratio (sine of 108 degrees)?
The golden ratio is the ratio found in geometry & spirals in all of nature."
Nepalese Japa Mala: 108 beads (54 x 2) complete the circle
Christian Rosary:  54 beads complete the pentagramic circle.

The pentagramic Wild Rose-ary
The Golden Ratio is the ratio of geometry & spirals throughout all of nature.
The sine of the 54 degree angle is half the Golden Ratio (sine of 108 degrees)


May 2 Fruita, CO   On Calling Oneself "Christian" or any other Religious Label

“Now I plead with you …
that there be no divisions among you,
but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind ...
For it has been declared to me ...
that there are contentions among you... 
Each of you says,
'I am Paulian,'
or 'I am Apollosian,'
or 'I am Cephasian,'
or 'I am Christian.'
Is Christ divided?"
--The Bible (1 Corinthians 1:10-13) 
Interestingly, the Biblical name for the Devil is “the Accuser,” translation of the Greek "Katēgoros" (κατήγορος), from which our word "categorizer" comes!




May 6 Fruita, CO    My Fruita Friend

I am honored to call this man one of my best friends.
Meet Fruita's Cullen Purser: Taking a hands-on approach to building community












May 11 Fruita, CO       On Heaven & Hell



















I write this for those who have struggled with religious programming, plagued by heaven & hell, especially those of the Big Book Abrahamic religions ("People of the Book"). 
When your goal is heaven, to be saved from hell, your motivation is credit & debt. You have ulterior motivation. Thus you are false. 
Notice how the mind concerned with heaven & hell is also obsessed with money & commerce & nationalism. 
Notice how such a mind has no place for compassion. 
Life is a big test:
What do you value most?
You get only 2 choices:
1) embrace love or
2) save your ass from hell & go to heaven.
Love, ever incarnated in the flesh, says: 
"For whoever desires to save her life will lose it,
but whoever loses her life for my sake will find it." (Matt. 16:25) 
Do we really think about this? That word "lose" here is 'apollymi' (ἀπόλλυμι), usually translated as "perdition", referring to the curse of hell & applied to Antichrist ("Son of Perdition").
Everything, I mean everything, must be given up for love. Even heaven.
Nothing is higher than love, nothing else matters.
Not even eternal heaven or hell matter in the face of Love. 
Yes, this was my liberation through a lifetime of religious programming.
I do not want to go to a heaven built for those who rant against LGBT people, look down upon women, curse other religions, despise other ethnicities & customs, against other nations. If that is Christianity, then I denounce it and take hell. I would rather be in hell for the sake of love. 
To find life you must give up life.
To find Christianity you must give up Christianity.
To find Islam you must give up Islam.
Those who want heaven & fear hell will be appalled by my heresy.

May 19 Fruita, CO    On "Christians"  Ignoring Jesus

It is my sincere and gentle wish that this pisses people off, on all sides of the spectrum.
"America's 5 Favorite Ways to Ignore Jesus"


May 27   Identical Twins:  Fundy  "Christians" & Fundy "Muslims"

 




































Below I share emails from a professed Muslim over the years, like I get from professed Christians. 
Just do a tiny tweak, change a couple nouns (e.g., "Islam" to "Christianity", "Mohammad" to "Jesus"). 
Do we not have identical twins, one professing Christianity, the other professing Islam? Do they both not have one identical spirit? 
Muhammad and Jesus and the Jewish rabbis, as well as the sages of every religion, preached the Golden Rule as the essence of true religion. If any of us actually practiced it, wouldn't we see our exact mirror reflection in the other? Wouldn't we listen to another religion, considering that they could be right, as we would have them to do to us? 
If we've missed the Golden Rule, haven't we missed all of our own religion, according to the the very fundamental of our own religion?
....................................................................
"Hello suelo,
there is only one true religion in the world and the true one is islam. Other than islam is a false one. please...try to see the real life.. There is no god but ALLAH and Muhammad pboh is the mesenger. The Last messenger. Please you must read, study alquran... see how Cat Steven convert to Islam .... , Study the life of the last prophet from a true history not from the oreantalist/western manipulation. Then you know prophet Muhammad is the perfect man in the world."
"How good is someone is...but if he/she die in other religion ...the punishment is hell forever and ever... ""I hope you will embrace islam before you die , otherwise you will be thrown into hell forever and ever..I think you can be a very good muslim if you convert because the way you live is very humble. But if you still as it is now, for sure, confirm you will be in hell... because all non-muslim or kafir will be in hell. For your information Jesus, Abraham,Noah, Joseph, Isaac, and all the mesengers of god..peace be upon them were muslims , they were not cristians or jews. They were all muslims and will be in heaven . Muslim believe Jesus is the mesenger of god not the son of god. So you don't accept prophet Muhammad pbuh is the last prophet...come on man...have you study the life or sirah prophet Muhammad pbuh...please open your heart...don't you afraid of hell????. The life of hereafter is real and will and must happen as mentioned in The Holy Quran...and all non-believers will and must be in hell...oh so sad... I hope that Allah bless me and put me in heaven."
"This is how you live when you don't have guidance. You use your intellect in a capacity that it was never meant for, drawing up your own reality. God meant for you to work, earn a living, and be functional."
"'Enlightenment' thank you for wasting my tax money because someone pays for your ridiculous ideologies! And some ignorant people reading this ( we are still in a recession), and we are encouraging economic stimulus how the heck are people going to read this and what to aid in getting the American dream back? God created all things just like he created the people that have the ideas to create and discover what we have in this world. To me you are offending God to the highest extent by acting holier then though to not use the products, and knowledge that we have been given and especially if you don't pay for it and you use it or whatever you do then you are stealing from another persons lively hood."


May 29    On a Moneyless Community Forming in Colombia

Un pasito a la vez

Stuff like this makes me so happy. This hombre in Colombia, Juan Manuel Idrobo, contacted me 3 years ago, saying he wanted to live without money, & maybe start a community in Colombia. After 3 years he just contacted me again. Look what he's doing. I myself have yearned to start moneyless community but it hasn't worked out for me so far. So it thrills me to see other people are successful doing it or making steps toward it all over the world.  


June 3  A visit from my cousin's son James, before he enters the Peace Corps.

My cousin, James, his friend Brian (took this pic) and me
following our ornithologist friend, Jesse,
up to the Colorado National Monument.

June 8  Fruita, CO   On the Irresponsibility of Using Banks   

I know this is tough to swallow, because most everybody uses a bank. But it's truth. All our protests against the dragon are futile if we still feed the dragon. I've posted my essay several times in the past, and I'll keep periodically posting it until it sinks in. 
"It is irresponsible to pay a bank 'back'.
Why? Because there is nothing to pay 'back'.
The bank lent us absolutely nothing in the first place.
It's amazingly simple when we erase the illusion of numbers and look at actual goods and services.
If we have more than we need, we are in debt to those with less than they need, from whom those goods were taken.
In banking, those with less than they need are 'in debt' to those with more than they need, which is contrary to all the physical and spiritual laws of the universe.
In other words, 'Owe no one anything, but to love one another' means don't take more than you need, and share everything as the atmosphere is shared by and for everything."  
How to Become Free From Debt https://sites.google.com/site/livingwithoutmoney/Home/how-to-become-free-from-debt


June 10 Fruita, CO 




June 11 My, my... how we've advanced?


DNA analysis is showing that we and peoples all over the world can trace our genetics to the ancestors of the Bushmen in Southern Africa. Bushmen have some of the greatest, if not the greatest, human genetic variation in the world.