Raised To Fear The Yes In Ourselves

from my flickr photostream

The news and images from Iran have been gripping and frightening. This is the world of the web. Revolution and protest going around the roadblocks erected by the official media representatives via citizen cell phones, computers and cameras. Women in blue jeans, head scarves and portable media. The brutal murders and assaults, the old women , marching in black, smiling. In one account, someone was describing being caught with a group of other students and riot police wading into the group with truncheons, and he said, "then the fear stopped, and we began to yell to each other that we were all in it together."

This movement has taken on a life of its' own. It's no longer about politics, or this or that candidate. It's people as a country saying "no confidence" to it's government, true democracy in action. What is it for? They may not even know. It becomes important to stand and be counted in order to go on living one's life.

As a mother of two 20-ish students, I can only say that many mothers will have their hearts broken from this. Prayers and bearing witness to the voices lives and courage of these kids [and adults] seems so little. We can only hope that there is the hand of the Divine somewhere in here. The You Tube videos of citizens chanting the name of God on the rooftops is pretty humbling, I must say.

From the flickr page of fhashemi:

"Human beings are members of a whole
In creation of one essence and soul

If one member is afflicted with pain
Other members uneasy will remain.

If you have no sympathy for human pain
The name of human you cannot retain."

--Saadi

**
September 1, 1939
W. H. Auden

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

**

"There are thresholds which thought alone, left to itself, can never permit us to cross. An experience is
required - an experience of poverty, of sickness."
- Gabriel Marcel
Les Pauvres de Yahvk

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"We have been raised to fear the yes in ourselves."
- Audre Lorde

**
"Each chapter of the Bhagavad Gita concerns a particular yoga.  This first chapter is called "The yoga of
Arjuna's despair" and it is significant that the experience of despair is a yoga;  despair is often the first
step on the path of spiritual life.  It is very important to go through the experience of emptiness,
of disillusion and despair  Many people do not awaken to the reality of God,  and to the experience of
transformation in their lives,  until they reach the point of despair.

---Bede Griffiths
River of Compassion

*