Wednesday, September 29, 2010

For a Dreamer who Understands...

Oft times the dreamer has to wonder:

WAR WITHIN
June 15, 1997
8:08 AM

In a land
below a land
below a land
below a land
where fear commands
and fear demands
are many hands
that reach to grasp
but never clasp
the ones that work above.
They work from fear, not love.

They prey upon the meek.
They feed upon the weak.
And love, they never seek
never understanding...
always hate demanding them...
commanding them to kill...
yet never they die.
Strangle, maim,
their faces never the same but always returning,
always learning nothing.

Hope unknown,
never shown,
they walk in fear of each other and lash out,
smash out,
hash out over and over their never ending cycles of killing,
yet living through.

Trying to do it again,
and again,
and again,
in this land
below a land
below a land
below a land
where hate and fear command and demand of them
a cycle of never coming to know
a way to find relief.
Constantly in grief...

Among them I found me.

Among them was my brother.

Prey to the fear and the hate.
Not understanding, not relating
to anything I saw or felt or dreamed...
I screamed,
and the land never left me.

Another cycle shown.
Another battle thrown at me,
my brother,
(my mother of my later years,
her son),
his many fears and tears,
and over and over the cycles played,
new hatreds made,
new fears portrayed,
or old fear cycling on as if never to come to know,
never coming to grow,
never working into the land above
where we worked in a little more love.
Or the land above that, where fear remained,
but was at a more tolerable level.

What brought this dream on?
Why was I gone so long in this world,
never escaping the outer hatred,
the inner fear?
Why was death near, but never coming?

In fear I screamed,
in screaming I awakened
in the world I know now.
Wondering if somehow
I’d lived that world before.

I can’t ignore the feelings as I wake...
my body shivers,
shaking,
wondering at the hardness of my escape
into what I now call reality.

What I saw within my inner eye...
the skies of lives gone by,
or still to come?
None of this was home.
This land below the land
below the land
below the land
where fear commanded me,
demanded me to be
in fear of me and all around.

Always calling, yet never being heard.
Always feeling something wrong, and sure
a better way was there...
Somewhere.

Have I walked these times?
Have I talked these lines
of hatred over and over
in memories now long past?
The images have lasted long into my waking now.
This dream, yet not a dream
that seems to have brought compassion to my soul.

I was killed,
over, and over, and over,
yet never gone from amongst them,
I learned to lash out,
fight back,
attack before I was attacked,
yet I always lost,
dying, yet not gone,
again the cycle played,
a new face, yet the same
became my foe

and off we’d go again, in private battle
with a knife or gun,
or just our fists and hands trying to strangle one another.

In my brother’s eyes I saw
this thirst to have my death.
This drive to take the breath of life I had.

This tragedy I’ve dreamed before.
What message does it bring,
this cycling dream of battle with him?
What has he to forgive me for?
What have I ignored in the healing between us?
What trust was lost in these lives in eons gone?

What wrong have I done him,
(perhaps in dreams gone past)
that makes this dream last so long
within me?


So finally waking in a land
above a land
above a land
above this land of hate...
and in command of greater learning,
greater yearnings to be free from the bonds
I must have fettered him with,
I send my love back down.

Consciously, hopefully wiser,
I send my love in softness, and in prayer...
hoping it will reach there
into this land of fear and hate
where constantly my brother and I war.

And, God willing,
I hope this time the love comes through,
I hope this time the healing comes,
and we’ll have to fight no more.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

One of My Earliest Writings

I want to share this with a nephew of mine who qouted Woody Guthrie this morning on FB. I was feeling this way when I was 17...


THE SINGER
1975


I heard tale sayin there’s a young man playin at the bar tonight.
A quiet, lonely singer who has never been a winner... his guitar’s all right.
(But he wouldn’t sell his soul, and the crowd will never know...
and it’s sad that they don’t try to understand...)
I heard tale sayin there’s a young man playin: where’s the band?

Silent eyes beneath long strands of tattered hair.
And you and I don’t realize what’s hidden there...
how much they care, and how they long to be like you and me.

Fifteen years lonely and to think life’s only in a song?
Does the rhyme he’s playin seem to think he’s sayin he belongs?
Well I hear tell sayin there’s a young man playin at the bar tonight.
And you know, it’s kinda funny he ain’t playin for the money...
his guitar’s all right.

(If you don’t sell your soul, then the people want to know...
and it's sad because they’ll never understand...)
Well I hear tale sayin there’s a young man playin... where’s the band?

Saturday, September 11, 2010

9/11/2001 -- My thoughts

Today is a day of remembrance.

A flag was put up in my yard this morning in honor of a day that flags weren't put up on until about 9 years ago, which isn't a fifth of my life yet. And I'm not sure how I feel about it.

I know where I was and how I felt 9 years ago. I was dumbstruck. I was at the bank and the teller told me she had just heard things were going on in New York, and I rushed home, and kicked the kids off the television and sat and watched with the rest of the world as events unfolded... I got to the tv just moments before the first tower started falling, and then I watched all the destruction, and felt deeply for all the people, and I watched in horror as so much went to waste. Being an accountant, I was especially struck by how meaningless the work that we do can suddenly become. Maybe I noticed the papers flying around more because of what I do... but I didn't miss the significance of the loss of so much.

The next day, I had to drive out to Wyoming to work with a client, and I remember how exremely eerie it was to have nothing in the air. Nothing. I talked to my cousin who was flying for Life Flight a while after that, and he said that he was in the air on a flight, and it was the weirdest feeling to have nothing on the radio waves that was "normal."

I remember thinking though, that maybe our administration wasn't as guiltless in all of this as it suddenly was made out to be. I've thought much since then about what the target of these people were... these radicals that dared to die for what they believed in. They attacked the symbols of our financial world. They attacked the government that they believed was misleading the "Godless" people of the west, who worshipped the material over the spiritual.

Did I sanction their attack? Not in the least. Did I understand their attack? Unfortunately for me it seems sometimes... yes I did.

I was brought up in the public school systems learning all sorts of rallying cries... Remember the Alamo... Give me Liberty, or give me Death; and every day I stood up in the morning and we pledged allegiance to our flag, our God and our Nation.

I served my country right after high school for three years. And then I served it again as a reservist for another 2 or three years. It was a peace time army, in a time when the nation was trying to understand the outcome of Vietnam, and folks were passionate on both sides of the coin.

I was born with a musician's heart, and a writer's soul. I was drawn to the music and lyrics and movies that cried for peace. I understood the hippie movement, but was not one. I understood the patriotic movement, and served my country, but began to see the falacies of how government was running things in my little part of the world, and I didn't really care for the waste.

As an Army musician I played the Star Spangled Banner more times than most Americans will ever hear it. I still feel a tear in my eye when I am at a military funeral, and I see the flag draped over the coffin of a soldier who has passed on. These things still stir the blood and honor in me.

I love America, but America is not the pure and innocent country that was suddenly thrust upon me the day 9/11 hit.

In the aftermath, as I prayed for peace in my heart and with many that felt like me, the nation's administration and the general mood of Americans around me were bent on war. Did I sanction those feelings? No. Did I understand them? Yes.

I sometimes think it would be so much easier to see the world in black and white... to not think, and buy into the rhetoric of the times. It seems that the administration and many of the religions of the world really played the trump card and whipped up anger and hatred against each other. Ah, that same old same old way that the problems of the world are always dealt with... war.

I found myself on the wrong side of the general clamor all of a sudden. The president let it be known that if you weren't for his war, suddenly you weren't patriotic. And I felt that around me as well.

Did I honor the victims of 9/11 any less than the flag waving folks at the time? No. Did I understand their "righteous" anger?

No.

Support America. God Bless America. Support our troops.

Yes, I still honor those sayings, but only in part. The God I began to know on the day that so much came down in America... wasn't an American God. God was the creator of all things, of which this planet is such a small part.

So in my heart I began praying, God bless this earth, and all her people, and all her creatures, and all her beauty, where ever it is.

And then one day I saw a bumper sticker that said "God bless the World."

To be honest, I cringe even now when I see the slogan "God Bless America." To me, it is only the beginning. We can not be One if we are only going to recognize one point of view.

To me, the lesson of 9/11 wasn't so much a cry to become more patriotic, but a reminder that it was time to become a more spiritual people. Not a religious people... a spiritual people. A people that can finally begin to see how much more we have in common with the rest of the world than not.

God Bless our Universe, and all that makes such be.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

On the Lighter Side:

I met a new blog site this past week or so... well, I guess I could say that as I've never met the writer, although I have met the man... well, I guess I can't really say that I've met the man, but we Face Book now, and we were introduced by a gal that I e-mail and went to High School with, and I have met her, so I suppose I can say that I've kinda met the writer of the blog, well I know she's met the writer of the blog somewhere in their pasts because she and I are in Utah now and he's in Texas and my wife and I would be in either the upper Oregon area or the upper New England area this time of year but definately in Arizona for the warmth when the snow flies so I guess we wouldn't be in Texas where the writer of this blog whom I've never met but now know lives.... lives.

(Whew)

He was doing something I hadn't thought about! He was writing two or three blogs, depending on his mood, and you can go to one blog if you want serious, and you can go to another blog if you just want a peice of his mind and you can go to other blogs to meet his family (my girls have started their own blogs and they are all over there on the left hand side if you want to go to any of them which I would recommend because I love to go there...)

(Whew, agian.)

For myself, I've just been cutting and pasting on this site mostly because I've been putting what little there is of my mind into my computer for quite sometime, and I figure I deserve the break now that the technology has caught up to me!

Sometimes I get really deep and serious, and I like being deep and serious (I'm not sure too many people around me can stand me that way,) but then I deny myself the Joy of being just plain goofy! I love being goofy! I love that life came with a humor button that we can push when it get's too much! (And I know most people around me can't stand me that way!)

So, to lighten it up, I thought I'd cut and paste a writing I did about my dreams into this blog, and maybe you will connect, and maybe you won't, and maybe, if my fan meter is accurate, you will have already read this, but it's worth putting in another place, just so I can come somewhere else where it looks different!


.... well I'll be derned... I can't cut and paste this one into the editing box right now. I wonder if I'm in voilation of Copyright infringement on my own work? It wouldn't surprise me. My computers are saving me from plagiarizing myself! Thank you most wonderful and gracious peices of......



(beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep)

Monday, September 6, 2010

A Letter

There was a Facebook posting going around about "hit like" if you are a True Christian. I have a hard time with those things, so I jotted down what I felt here.

Dear God:

Am I a Christian?

I read your book several times. There are some beautiful passages in it, but… even as a little kid I had a hard time reading it. The writing alone was sloppy, edited beyond belief, but I found I could use it to justify my points of view, but somehow… it felt like I was missing the point… well, really, I just didn’t get the point, or at least… I thought I did… but I felt empty.

Then a church came along God! And they said that you hadn’t stopped talking, and that made sense to me! So for a long time I went to this church, well… on and off… but I read all their books too, and they had beautiful passages in them, but my friends who called themselves Christians would get mad at me and show me passages in their book (the one I had trouble reading, remember?) and would tell me the devil had a hold on me.

I was scared God. I didn’t like what I had read about the devil, and I never wanted people to think that I followed him! I certainly didn’t consider myself a “devilian”. I would have thought that the way I was trying to live would make me a good Christian. I guess I didn’t get it God.

So when I got a bit older, I began to wonder who Christ really was. I mean, I had a picture of Him from your book God (you remember, the one you “wrote” that is so mysterious and not so well written) and I had realized by now that your book had been written by men who loved you, but other men had changed and twisted your words and called them yours so they could have power over other men around them. What had been written about Christ was not what I think Christ would have been proud of… and it bothered me God, that Your Son had not been allowed to write in your book in the first place, other men had just tried to remember what he said years after he said them (I can’t remember what I said yesterday!)

But I still felt like I was a Christian God, I mean, I hoped that I loved your Son, even though I was not a perfect boy, but I wasn’t trying to hurt people or nothing! I was really trying to live what I felt Christ was teaching on the mountain that day… but I still felt that something was missing.

In your book, in James somewhere, you mentioned that if we didn’t understand, we could come to you, and that you wouldn’t be mad at us (I guess that’s what “upbraideth” means – by the way, that word doesn’t pass my spell-check) so I turned on some music that touches my heart deeply, and I quieted my thoughts the best I could God and I listened for you. I truly tried to listen for you.

And I heard you God! And I heard your Son, and felt your love, excuse me, your Deep Love for me and everything you have created everywhere… (of which this world is such a small part) and I started using my little talent to write what I was feeling and the tears flowed over the paper and in my heart… you know, those cleansing ones You love to send to us little children when we feel we’ve gone astray…

And I shared my feelings God. I thought my Christian friends would love them, but I heard so many times that they ran counter to your book God. I don’t get it. I really don’t.

My world picture isn’t helping me God. In my heart I felt a deep love for all things, for all beings, for all creation… and that it all breathes Life, and that you breathe all of this into everything. But my Christian friends don’t often get that. They read in your book to love your enemy, but they hold their banners high and march into “righteous” war against them. (By the way God, didn’t you tell me that their enemies were your children? Why are they trying to destroy half of themselves not to mention your children because of their banners?)

I don’t know God. I know I love you, and I know I love Christ as I feel Him in my heart… but I have a hard time seeing that Love I feel inside in the outer world right now. The ones who claim your book is your only literal word seem to be making as big a mess of things politically around me, as the other ones who say their book is your literal word.

Are Religions your home God? Do you sanction this group over here above that group over there? Why did you make us so different in our thinking God? Wouldn’t it have been so much easier to make us all the same? We wouldn’t fight. We wouldn’t call each other names. Wouldn’t we be true Christians then?

Oh, and God… somewhere along the line I got the crazy idea that your heart and love are in each one of us, and that we have the gifts to lift our world, but so many of the folks around me think you have to do all the work yourself. Aren’t you doing that through us? Aren’t you asking us to be quiet, and listen to our hearts and learn that you still walk among us? And that we are you in that respect! That you lift the world through us?

Isn’t that what Christ was trying to tell the people on the mountain so long ago?

Anyway that’s what I got. I’m sorry I missed the point God. I know that if I publish this letter in my outer world, all sorts of Christians are going to call me a Deviler, or maybe they won’t call me that but I will be given some label, and probably have to go get drugs to fix me up somehow.

Anyway God thanks for listening. I do love you. I do love your Son Christ that I have felt in my heart and in my hands so many times. I just wish that qualified me to be a Christian…

That’s all.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Affirmation - Two days after my birthday in 2002


Sky canvas,
cloud, blue, cloud,
then rain.

A bow of color sometimes,
A place to dream.

Sky.

Flight and daring
and caring for all
that moves softly below.

The sway of trees
and the rustle of the grasses
that pass within the vision
of the heaven beings,
The hawk and crow...

They see and know from the sky
what I see below.

I long to see from their eyes
and try my own wings.

To soar over the mountains
that now defeat me.
That keep me from my goal’s end.

In my mind I fly their way,
but day to day I walk my own path,
and sooner or later,
if I am moving as well,
the same mountains are crossed.

Whether bird or man...

I can.

Bruce K Bushman 4/25/2002

Friday, September 3, 2010

An American Reflection

time to reflect...

um, sorry.

2 much 2 do.

gotta run.