Spirituality – Kensho Homestead

Beauty is Intoxicating

Every gift is a curse. But, is every curse also a gift?

I’m going to take the long way around a pretty basic question, but one that I am honestly curious about and would love to hear any thoughts on the matter.

When I was a teenager, I had a number of “love interests” that were short-lived, but intense enough that I remember them vividly. I went from Tom-boy to boy-crazy fairly quickly, in just one summer actually. For someone so young I found myself navigating very choppy waters without a smidgeon of skill.

Two of them, around the age of 16 and 17, are fit examples for this story. One was a short-term boyfriend, another was a near miss.

The near miss was a one-legged salesman. I was a shoe sales clerk at the shopping mall in Chesterfield, Missouri. It was actually a really good job and I was glad to have it. Suburban life before car age is brutally boring for someone like me. I finally felt free and so adult-like as I strutted through the mall on breaks in my heavily discounted Overland Trading Company shoes.

I don’t remember which shop it was now, but I would expressly wander in that direction just to see if he was there. He would smile at me, I felt he was even waiting for me to pass by, and I would smile back, maybe give a cute little wave for added effect.

That he had only one leg was not what made me want to gawk at him. But rather that he was gorgeous. I mean, seriously Gorgeous. Handsome, amazing build, confident, well-dressed, and just the right amount of older for a 16 year old to get herself swooning in his direction.

We talked at some point. Went to the food court together. Became, not exactly friends, but something like ‘mall buddies’. Then somehow it happened that we decided to have a real date, where he came over to my house to pick me up in his car.

And I will never forget that moment. It was a sudden disaster. That he had one leg did not phase me in the public sphere, not at all. It felt like a non-issue. Sure, I was curious what had happened, and I’m sure I asked at one point and he answered, but I don’t recall his story. I liked him. I especially liked looking at him. I liked that he liked me. I remember, I really liked that.

I remember he was kind, and a gentleman. And I hated myself. I hated myself that suddenly, seeing him in my house, something switched for me that I could not comprehend. I sensed overwhelmingly, all of a sudden, that I could not be who he needed me to be. It was a shameful, and quite devastating feeling for me at that ripe young age.

On one other occasion not long afterward I again became intoxicated by another young man’s beauty. He was my age and the son of a family friend from church. Everybody loved him. It also ended badly, despite my genuine feelings for him, that certainly went beyond just his great looks. And that also came down to the same issue, in 20/20 hindsight: I can’t be who you need me to be. The realization coming too late to avoid the associated pain. Their beauty, I really believe, clouded what I should’ve seen before leading them on.

And my point in sharing these very old recollections is, could the opposite also be true? I guess I feel it would be nice if it were. I saw a man the other day who was clearly very compromised—and my heart went out to him, in a very pitying way. I knew, from his appearance, he suffered many hardships in life. I’d like to believe that in his apparent curse, he has found a deeper gift. Sort of like the opposite of the gift of beauty that invariably bestows pain due to all of us who are so entranced by it.

Or, I’m just looking for an avenue out of my automatic pity for him? Thoughts?

Still This Love Crap

Have you ever experienced unrequited love? Ever love someone who was so out of your league they didn’t know you existed? Ever been horribly, unfairly, unceremoniously jilted by a lover? Ever love someone for years who treated you like shit most of the time? Ever love someone who turned out to be completely different than the one you thought you fell in love with?

Ever tried to muster up feelings of love for someone or something you did not, could not, love?

And yet still, despite its ephemeral nature—from its meaning, to its translation, to how it is individually experienced—some of our greatest thinkers, philosophers, social critics, poets, not to mention a good chunk of pop culture, still repeats “Love is the answer.”

We should love everyone and especially nature. That’s what’s wrong with the world, they insist, not enough love. And every time I hear this, I roll my eyes, even when it comes from someone I love.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b08njtjg

Most recently I heard it in an interview coming from Wendell Berry (link). How someone so inspiring, who has led such a charmed and wholesome and respectable life, who now at an advanced age seems so wise, could repeat such nonsense confirms for me only one thing: “We don’t see things for what they are, we see them for what we are.”

Love is the answer to the West’s problems, they say, because you take care of what you love. And the younger thinker and social critic Paul Kingsnorth agrees with him.

How lovely.

Now here’s a homework assignment I’d love to give to these fools. Kingsnorth likes to study tribal cultures, which I think is really cool. He likes them because they have a solid home in nature, unlike Westerners. And I agree. So, I think he should ask all those tribal folks their opinions about this ‘love’ solution so many Western thinkers keep harping on about.

My bet is, it doesn’t translate. At all. I bet he’d have to write an entire essay for them about what he means by love in the first place, let alone how he expects that will solve anything.

How do you make someone love you? Or care about you? I have a difficult time imagining a more monumental task. And yet, somehow those who care about nature are tasked with getting those very great many, like the Technocrats and their vast entourages, to not only love it, but to respect it, to care for it, to nurture it even. Seriously?

What a debilitating delusion they are spewing. And not just once or twice out of an understandable desperation. But constantly, for decades now.

Yet to call it out for the obvious shallow fantasy that it is, I become the bitch.

Well then, so be it. Let me play that role for a minute or two right now.

Imagine Mother Nature is your very own mother. Maybe you love your mother, let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. You love her, but your sisters love her more. And your mother and your sisters are screaming at you—“You don’t love me!” “You don’t care about me!” “You are exploiting me and you must stop!”

How will you respond to their shrieks and demands of love and care? Deny your lack of love, perhaps? Maybe yell back that they are all wrong about you? Maybe ask what they mean by that?

You might be so sure of your love that you ask what you can do to prove it?

Maybe Mom replies she wants you to write her a poem professing your loving feelings. So you do. You go even further, and you write 10 poems and throw in a tediously long essay to boot. And you’re very proud of your efforts and you feel you’ve really captured the intense love you have for her.

And she says she likes them, even the tediously long essay. In fact, everyone who loves her also agrees how perfectly you’ve captured those feelings of love through your words. Astonishing.

But, after all, those are just words, and you said to love her is to care for her, so she wants to see some action.

So with the same zeal you wrote the ten poems and tediously long essay you tackle the part where your loving words become caring actions.

You chop wood and carry water for her. You refrain from any negativity in her presence, because she doesn’t like it. You insist that everyone in her company, through shame or coercion or even force, abide by her rules and preferences.

At long last, she is satisfied with your efforts. You can feel the power of her appreciation filling your heart and coursing through your veins.

She tells you, “Child, you are a true master of loving care!”

“Except, you see, there’s so many children over there who don’t love me. And their lack of love for me is upstaging your love. Their lack of love is demonstrably more powerful than your true love. What can you do about this?”

And you reply, “Great Mother, don’t you worry, I can make them love you like I do!”

Really? Can you? What makes you so sure about that?

You read them your poems, and they smirk. Then they read your tediously long essay and shrug. You show them your admirable work in fetching wood and carrying water for your Great Mother, and they respond by clear cutting your forest and damming your river.

Then they tell you their favorite joke, laughing all along.

The joke goes like this: There were these three dudes on a yacht. One was an American, another was Russian, and the third one was Mexican. They were all drinking and getting boastful as drunken men like to do.

The Russian said, “In my country, we have so much vodka we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of vodka and throws it into the ocean.

They all laugh harder. So, the Mexican says, “In my country, we have so much tequila we can afford to throw it away!” And he takes a full bottle of tequila and throws it overboard.

And they all laugh harder still. Then the American says, “Well, in my country we have so many . . .

And he picks up the Mexican and throws him overboard.

The Russian and American look at each and howl with laughter. And the American blurts out between guffaws, “Tough love!”

To The Holy Spirit

O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,
Who in necessity and in bounty wait,
Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken,
By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.
Wendell Berry

When Money Is Your Master

When money is your master you create this

Instead of this

When money is your master you attract her

Instead of her

When money is your master you cherish

Over

You believe swindlers, just because they’re rich

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

You obey tyrants, just because they’re rich

You idolize fools, just because they’re rich

You worship at the twin alters of Ignorance and Superfluous

**********

I read a story decades ago when I was in the Peace Corps that was a well-known parable, but was new to me. I repeat it now hoping it will land for the first time on someone new to its moral and ring true in their heart for as long as it has in mine.

A rich man went to vacation on a beautiful island and sat in his beach chair under a sun umbrella reading a novel and looking out over the beautiful sea. He felt marvelous and relaxed and drank in the scenery with great satisfaction. He loved the experience so much he went back again the following year for his vacation, and again the year after that.

This third year, feeling again very happy and even magnanimous, he noticed the fisherman on the beach that he had seen during each of his vacations. He liked watching the man, who was very agile with his line and very patient for the five fish he caught each day. His bucket held the fish perfectly and he spent every morning on the beach until he filled his bucket and then he left.

One morning the vacationing man decided to strike up a conversation with the fisherman and they shared some pleasant small talk, so the next few days they stood together on the beach while the fisherman caught his five fish.

The vacationing man said, “I see you here every day and you always catch five fish and then leave.”

“Yes, that’s true. I have a wife and three children and my wife cooks up the fish for us each day when I return home.”

“But why do you always catch five fish every day?”

“Because that’s what we eat and that’s all I can carry home in this pail.”

“Well, if you caught more fish, you could sell them, and then you’d have enough to buy a bigger pail and even a wagon, so you could bring home more fish.”

“Oh yes, a wagon would be nice. With a wagon I could bring home many more fish, and sell some at the market.”

“That’s right. And then you could save some, so you could buy a boat, and then you could really get a lot of fish!”

“For sure that’s true, I could get a lot more fish with a boat,” he agreed.

“No doubt. And with all that money, you could afford to go on a vacation.”

“Oh, a vacation! I’ve never been on a vacation before, that sounds fun.”

“So, what do you think you’d like to do on your vacation?”

“I think I’d like very much to go fishing on the beach.”

Captured!

This is a summary, of sorts, to Jasun Horsley’s thought-provoking work: Prisoner of Infinity: UFOs, Social Engineering and the Psychology of Fragmentation adapted, in my mind, to the song: I’ve Seen All Good People by YES.

All good people . . .

“One connection I made (in my own mind at least) early on was to the transhumanist movement, something I’d been researching while looking into autism (a project that got steamrollered by this one). I had looked briefly into Ray Kurzweil and ‘The Singularity,” and planned to cite it in passing in the larger context of SRI and spiritual engineering.”

So satisfied . . .

For all the Eastern spiritual jargon favored by these individuals and institutes, the aims they put forth (in common with those of trans humanism and the Singularity) are really indistinguishable from the aims of Western occultism (and groups like Scientology): namely, the development of superpowers. In the West, we tend to confuse psychism with spiritual attainment. Yet from and Eastern point of view, they are seen as at odds with one another—hence the many warnings about ‘siddhis’.”

I’m on my way . . .

“To give an example: One way in which experiences get swept up by a sense of being on a world-saving mission is by trying to get the government (and other people) to see what the aliens are doing. Scratch the surface of this phantastic narrative and underneath we may find something more mundane and tragic: the frustration and torment of a child, unable to get his parents (or other adults, if the abuse or neglect is by the parents) to see what’s happening to him. The experiencer’s experience then becomes part of a larger, unconscious reenactment, meant to bring about whatever resolution failed to occur when it was most needed.”

Move on to any black square, use me anytime you want . . .

“Implicit in this scenario is the understanding that, to become more than human entails becoming less than human. Ironically, the same subhuman indifference to other people’s pain—the complete absence of empathy or compassion or conscience—must be extended to the controllers who are performing these horrendous conditioning exercises. Possibly it is even one of their goals, based on an understanding that, the more abhorrent the acts they commit, the more desensitized they will become, the more ‘invulnerable’ and ‘powerful’ they will experience themselves to be.”

For the Queen to use . . .

“Returning to the more solid ground of Industrial Light & Magic Reaganomics; if,as the evidence suggests, none of this is coincidental but is by careful design, then the entire Star Wars phenomenon—which continues to fire people’s most irrational, romantic responses to this day—is very different from what millions of impassioned devotees have hitherto dreamed of, even in their wildest fantasies. Such innocence may not only be a luxury: It may also be a commodity. The soul-deep mythic yearning of entire generations, tapped into by the use of images and carefully designed narratives, transmuted into a power source to be harnessed and directed into specific goals of progress, all in service of The Empire.”

Don’t surround yourself with yourself . . .

“One reason for the appeal of secret societies lies in what might be called the lure of the arcane. It is a basic human impulse to enjoy secrets, to be included in a special group that has privileged information about any subject that matter to the individual, whether government, finance, sports, the arts, or religion. In the mid-nineteenth venture Thomas De Quincey wrote: “To be hidden amidst crowds is sublime—to come down hidden amongst crowds from distant generations is double sublime.” De Quince was writing with a degree of cynicism about those who feel they are connected by ‘the grander link of awful truths which, merely to shelter themselves from the hostility of an age unprepared for their reception, must retire, perhaps for generations, behind thick curtains of secrecy.’ Yet his cynicism correctly identified a widespread phenomenon. A venture later C.G. Jung observed that ‘there is no better means of intensifying the treasured feeling of individuality than the possession of a secret which the individual is pledged to guard. The very beginnings of societal structures reveal the craving for secret organizations..’ This impulse accounts for the self-protective tendency among the young, but also among their seniors, to join teams, clubs, gangs, political parties, professional associations, and other circles.”

The Lure of the Arcane: The Literature of Cult and Conspiracy; Ziolkowski, Theodore. (Only the final quote.). I found both books to be interesting, but only Horsley’s would I recommend as being particularly relevant to current events.

Captured!

Mind-Body-Spirit

Last post I criticized the New Age movement but ended with the intention of offering the attributes of it in my opinion this next post.

Let me begin with just a bit of context—why do I care at all about the New Age movement (aka Positive Psychology, New Thought), and why do I think it should matter to a lot more folks?

In a nutshell, I’m interested in everything about culture creation, but especially those forces driving culture in a certain direction, whatever that direction may be.

That is Globalism currently—the One World Government and Religion as being pushed (or in rare cases, pushed back against) by every major institution around the world today.

Spirituality is the new global religion and for an assessment of what this religion is espousing and who are its leaders, here’s a good start.

Watkins’ Spiritual 100 List for 2021 – Watkins MIND BODY SPIRIT Magazine

1 Pope Francis
2 Dalai Lama
3 Black Lives Matter NEW
4 Eckhart Tolle
5 Desmond Tutu
6 Oprah Winfrey
7 Sadhguru
8 Alice Walker
9 Deepak Chopra
10 David Attenboroug

Love, Forgiveness, Positivity are the Father, Son, Holy Ghost of this religion. (Interesting note: Black Lives Matter just replaced Greta Thunburg from last year at position #3).

I heard a succinct sound bite that describes this religious movement: “The worship of the creation (Gaia) rather than the creator (God).”

Of course, all of these labels and angles are generalizations. It’s a very large, global movement with many working factions.

It is meant as a cohesive force, purportedly, based on a desired global peace. Whether or not this is the true purpose or will be the actual result is a matter of opinion, and I’d love to hear them for anyone who cares to share.

My opinion is: The single thing of real value that this religion has to offer is in its opposition to the philosophy of materialism, that is, that consciousness is an illusion and thought is an epiphenomenon of the brain. In other words—there is an ‘extended consciousness realm’ worthy of exploration that is being largely ignored, and often maligned, by modern Scientism.

The irony is, the famous New Agers on that list would probably not identify with the word ‘opposition’. However, the majority of them would identify with the reality that serious research being done in NDEs (near-death experience), reincarnation, ESP, the mind/body connection, etc. is being suppressed by mainstream science.

This is just a little blog that matters little to anyone. I am no scholar, just a very curious middle aged woman who questions Authority and resents attempts at being corralled by insidious (and often tyrannical) social (economical, political, educational, scientific, religious, etc.) forces.

I wonder why experiences and research concerning the possibility of the non-locality of thought is shoved into the fringe realms where, unfortunately, one also encounters a sky-high wall of phonies and fraudsters (quite a number of them I’d say are on that top 100 list!).

Perhaps it is time the Positive Psychology people started cleaning their own house? Or perhaps the first step is to recognize how dirty it really is?

If you are also a curious wanderer and wonder where much of this controversial science is explored, Skeptiko is at the top of my list.

Hope to hear some thoughts, or suggestions, or even criticisms of my wandering trails.

Photo by Du01b0u01a1ng Nhu00e2n on Pexels.com

The Folly of Forgiveness

The single most destructive virtue of Christianity is forgiveness.

In fact, it’s not a virtue at all, it’s a vice. It’s a ready-made excuse for laziness, cowardice, avoidance and self-aggrandizement.

Which is more challenging? Which is more beneficial to society?
A. Forgive those who trespass upon you.
B. Hold them accountable for their actions, or their lack of them.

The New Age movement, the modern outgrowth of our Christian heritage melded with aspects of Eastern religion/philosophy, shares this fundamental folly. You quite literally cannot read a spiritual or New Age text that does not claim something like this:

“Ultimately, make it your goal to move on to forgiveness of yourself and those involved in causing you pain in the past. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that what happened to you was acceptable. It simply means that you are no longer willing to allow a past injury to keep you from living fully and healthfully in the present.” Dr. Christiane Northrup, The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical & Emotional Health During the Change

Nonsense. Forgiveness most certainly DOES mean that you’ve found the offense acceptable—you’ve given them “a pardoning” — look it up!

Forgiveness: “To pardon; to remit, as an offense or debt, to overlook an offense, and treat the offender as not guilty.” Webster’s Dictionary 1905

When a school of philosophy/religion/spirituality (Or individuals!) must change the meaning of words in order to fulfill their mission of manipulation it becomes propaganda and begs the question, “Who benefits?”

It’s not simply forgiving past injury that’s keeping anyone from living healthfully in the present, true peace of mind comes when justice is served. We witness the lack of justice and accountability all around us today, and we have centuries of brainwashing in this particular vice-cum-virtue to thank for that.

Burying the hatchet is rarely a guarantee it stays buried. Life is not a sitcom and taking the easy way out is testament to a lack of virtue, not a grounding in it. “Kiss and make up” solves little. “Turn the other cheek” is a blanket invitation to abusers.

To forgive someone who has not asked for it, nor shows remorse, nor penance, nor changed his ways is not healthy—not for the individual, not for the culture—in the long run.

It might keep you from getting cancer next year, or so the New Age self-helpers keep insisting, but you’ve only kicked the can down the road and made it worse for the perpetrators’ next victims. Good for the guru’s pocketbook and status, not so good for future generations.

The Christian myth that claims those who live in proverbial glass houses should not throw stones is a recipe for granting pardon to serial criminals while demonizing petty theft and other personal, minor infractions.

Everyone might very well be a sinner, but not all sins are created equal.

Holding others’ accountable for their actions is far more difficult than giving them a pardon. It’s exhausting to have standards of behavior and stick to them. It’s miserable to feel the loneliness that comes with not accepting abuse in one’s relationships and surroundings. It sucks to stand up for yourself against the group and especially against loved ones. But battered partners who don’t leave, Stockholm syndrome, normalized corruption, addiction, insanity and suicide are the direct result of a culture obsessed with forgiveness.

Unearned forgiveness is:

*A green light to bad behavior
*Victim-blaming for those who don’t want to, or choose not to, forgive
*Spiritual bypassing
*Ensuring history repeats
*Lowering the morality bar
*Killing the messenger
*Requiring scapegoats (represented by our most celebrated scapegoat, Jesus)
*Requiring lies, whitewashing, spinning of narratives to maintain illusions
*Forcing individuals to fit the will of the power structure rather than forcing the power structure to fit the will of the people

The personal and political spheres overlap—what we tolerate in our own house, we tolerate in the White House. What results is repeat offenders who are eternally tolerated.

The New Age movement has managed to create the worst of two worlds: The magical child thinking and materialism of the West combined with the spiritual hierarchies, self-hypnosis and toxic mysticism of the East.

Next post: What I think the New Agers have gotten right.
Whaaa . . . .?!

Dead Giants & Illegal Owls

What to do with giants’ bones you find in the garden?
 You call the Authorities, who ‘donate’ them to the Smithsonian, where they disappear forever.

What to do with a dead owl found in your yard?
 You call the Authorities, who tell you to throw it in the trash, and pretend it never happened.

Electrocuted on your perfectly safe electrical wires? Impossible. Just like a duck the year before? Impossible.

Just like you, your own-human-self, jolted with permanent shoulder injury by our perfectly safe electricity? Nonsense.

That’s impossible. That never happens. That’s why we never record it or offer any way for any one to document it, because that proves it never happened.

The duck, the owl, your shoulder, NEVER happened. Report that, and that only, #6, to the Proper Authorities.

Yes Sir, that never happened. I have no electrocuted owl in my freezer. I have never been hurt personally by your Superior methods. I adore your system. I bow to your Eternal Authority.

Thank you, sir, may I have another?

Understanding Our Living-Death CultUR

Another installment of excellent links. Little time these days for more thoughtful posts, and that’s a good thing, since it’s spring! The real world of my garden trumps the cyber world of my words every time.

I do continue to research the State of our Global Enslavement, and find it more logical by the day. More on that soonish.

In the meantime, in case you care to follow some of the threads in our collective web of lies, here’s a few I find of value.

“Suppression of LIFE, in order to stop a purported germ, is institutionalized death.” Rejecting Rockefeller Germ Theory By Jon Rappaport

“This entire process has extremely interesting parallels with the theme of space fakery whether it’s propagated by NASA or the space agencies of other nations. We don’t have verifiable images of viruses; we don’t have verifiable whole (non-composite) images of the Earth, or many other space bodies such as moons, planets, etc. Instead we are fed CGIs and told not to question authority Is this science or is this faith-based Scientism? To what extent are we being manipulated when we are denied real and true photographs of the world around us, both on a micro and macro level? I would argue to a massive extent.”

Research as you dare.

Virus Misconception: 2020 Article by Dr. Stefan Lanka Reveals Truth

Is Germ Theory True – Here are tons of links to prove it’s not

Short and sweet, my dears, because I stand by the great old adage: The best teachers show you where to look, not what to see. (And certainly not what to buy!). 🙂

These guys know what I mean, I’m sure. Would love to have them over for our homemade hard cider! 🙂

Arrested Development

I often feel sorry for men. And those boys who try to become men, few as they may be nowadays.

I remember when my dad started writing poetry in middle age, in order to potentially ward off another divorce. It was a phase that didn’t last long and I don’t remember if his poetry was any good, but I remember being impressed by that effort. First he converted for her, got baptized and everything, then he attempted to swim, via words, the seas of emotion, alone, at high tide, with no training.

Doesn’t surprise me much. He’s always been impressive that way. Exactly that sort of way, actually. While dismally unimpressive in other ways.

I do understand that’s called being human.

But it bugs me this isn’t something we’re allowed to talk about, the being human part. The warts and all part. Because the sugar coating gets nauseating after a while. Besides, it’s not healthy, in that where’s the broccoli sort of way.

This is not allowed in my FOO (family of origin) and I know for certain, it’s not just mine. Broccoli hits that table only soggy and drowning in artificial cheese sauce.

Somehow over the generations there’s been a great divide happening between many aspects of familial and societal life, and leaving all conspiracy theories aside for a moment as to how that’s come to pass, there are clear and present repercussions being felt by the glaring lack of healthy masculinity being demonstrated currently in our culture.

Dad’s poetry efforts didn’t pan out. Too little, too late, I suspect. That pesky human error thing—hindsight, tunnel vision, any one of the 7 deadly sins—or whatever.

As flawed as I’m able to paint him, which depending on my mood might go pretty dark, it’s the unwashable tones that I prefer, whether that spectrum proves dark or light.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the skill, or the distance, to paint him well, to do him justice, warts and all, not even in words. But, someday.

All I feel able to do now is to demonstrate those parts of him I admire, and always have and always will, which comes down to pointing out their antithesis.

Who is Dad not?

This matters enough for me to post about publicly because there are a whole lot of heroes out there, but you’ll never learn about them until you turn off the TV and really tune in to what higher minds are trying to tell us, because it is becoming increasingly less common knowledge than it should be.

Examples of positivity masculinity exist and were once diligently cultivated. For every accusation of power abuse there is a man who gifted power, maybe even a dozen of them.

For every accusation of narcissism there is a man who dispersed his glory voluntarily upon those close to him.

For every accusation of arrogance, selfishness, egoism, betrayal, there is a man who knew, above all else, that what it takes to be a man is as tough as it is simple: never accept arrested development.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” -Theodore Roosevelt

Spooky Synchronicity

This is a post that defies logic, as I suppose you could already tell from the title. But, irrationality only scares me when it’s collective and blindly enforced.

For example, did you know that it’s illegal to possess an owl, dead or alive? Even an owl feather. I thought that was just a rumor, or one of those old, dumb laws that never get enforced and most folks have forgotten about anyway.

That is, until I called our local taxidermist to have one stuffed.

As chance, or synchronicity would have it, we found one dead in our front yard this past week. If you’ve ever seen one that close, and handled one, they are truly gorgeous and remarkable creatures. It looked perfectly healthy and in the prime of its life with no visible injuries or defects.

As chance, or synchronicity would have it, I’ve just been reading about owl symbolism in an interesting book called Lords of the Left-Hand Path: Forbidden Practices and Spiritual Heresies.

Those familiar with such symbolism will surely associate ‘dark magician’ Alister CrOWLy and Bohemian Grove with the owl. For many Christians the association will seem sinister and foreboding. To Satanists, however, the owl is known as the mascot of the sorcerers and a symbol of paranormal wisdom.

Belonging to neither of these faiths, I felt only awe, and deep sadness, as it appears from burns on its talons that it was electrocuted while feeding on a rodent. I revere and honor wildlife and abhor seeing it destroyed, whether accidentally or deliberately. The tears I shed for this beautiful creature are a testament to that fact.

I thought, what way might we honor the life of this magnificent being? I set it on the table, pulled the wings out to their full span, gently cleared a bit of grass from its feathers, and called the taxidermist.

I’ve never wanted or particularly liked mounted animal trophies. But, it just felt wrong to not do something, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

The taxidermist on the other end of the line took such a serious tone at my simple question it immediately jarred me.

“I could go to jail!” He meant me, as well as him, and sounded so paranoid I tried to defend myself.

“But we found him dead in the front yard!” I explained again. “What should I do with it then?”

Throw it in the trash was his reply.

He then proceeded to discourage me from calling any other taxidermists lest my loose lips land me in jail.

So, this is how to honor the death of a revered and respected wild predator—throw it in the trash? Yet another brilliant Government mandate, no doubt.

Reminds me of a meme I recently read: “If you think our problems are bad, just wait till you see our solutions.”

If owls really are as wise as the myths make them out to be, I seriously doubt they’re resting in peace.

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