The words of a dead man...

Tonight, I am sodden in this.  I, too, am a human.  I, too, feel the unjust in what has just happened.  When will we stop killing?  For EVERY reason.

Below is a letter from Troy Anthony Davis, his body now dead and his soul returned to its source.  His work in this lifetime brought us to this pivotal point in the growth of the Collective Soul of Humanity.  When will it stop?

To All:

I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith. It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.

As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy. I can’t even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,

“I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”

Never Stop Fighting for Justice and We will Win!

It's okay, you're not the only one...

I just received an email from a very close friend who moved to the other side of the world a couple years ago to follow her dreams.  She has.  But it's not enough.  It got me thinking (and writing) about how just about everyone I know is struggling right now.  I don't mean to say that people's lives are falling apart, in fact most "strugglers" I know seem to be doing okay "on paper".  They seem content and in most ways, they are FINE.  But fine just isn't enough when your soul is knocking on your brain and saying, "Hello, it's me, your higher self.  You're here for a purpose.  A big one.  And it's a big undertaking.  You won't fail, but you will have to change a lot of things - let's get going."

Sound familiar?

That's all well and good if you know what that purpose is (or at least think you know - or have an idea) and it's easy enough to live with if what you need to change doesn't cause you too much pain, or financial burden... but I don't think that's the case for many of us.  Maybe most of us.  I think we are all releasing something huge... and in some cases, we are releasing everything.

At first I thought it was mainly happening to my "generation" (let's call that Generation X - fancy label isn't it?) - but even that isn't right.  My mom is changing in ways I never imagined.  Others her age are turning over MASSIVE stones in their own lives.  At first, I thought my former students (who are now 18-24-ish)  didn't face as many of these challenges - I thought they had a different perspective because of their innate open-mindedness - they grew up living and breathing a kind of openness that has existed in their world view because they were born into a world that is connected via the webosphere.  They ARE the children of the global village.  But that assumption wasn't right either.  Many of them find the norms of society to be boring, redundant, pointless and un-engaging.  And they're right. How can we lose them before they've even really begun the "grown-up" journey?

Actually, I don't think we are losing them, I think they are leading us on this journey into Change.   For their generation, it's a default setting.  For us Gen Xers, it's a kind of refusal to conform.  For the once-radical baby boomers it's an overdue rebellion (they who got distracted raising us Gen Xers).  For all of us humans though, it is a very personal and very difficult set of questions, doubts, worries, self-examinations and, in the end, a battle that can only be fought and won with love and honesty.  Love and honesty with Ourselves.  Talk about a tough audience.

I wish I had answers for my girlfriend but I feel as though my only advice to her is to stick with it.  I'll stick with it too. (Mine is no less open-ended, unsettled, raw and inside out than anyone elses.)  Not only will I stick with my own uncertainty, pain, loss and confusion, I will do it right beside her (thank God for the internet).  And apparently I'll do it out in the open for the rest of the world to witness if they care to.  I suppose a big part of the self-honesty in this is admitting that we are not alone in the uncertainties - and then reaching out to ask someone to stand by us while we go through it.

This great collective of individual struggles is part of a greater human struggle to find what is right for all of us.  Collectively.  The Collective Human Population.  After all, we are all the same, aren't we?

What are you waiting for?

What now?

Which seeds are we planting?

I don't think I need to say much about September 11th today on the ten year anniversary of that awful day.  The sentiments have been written over and over today by almost everyone remembering September 11th.  We all have our memories, our personal stories and our pain.  I acknowledge that and I feel for us all.

But so much has happened in ten years.  So much has also not happened that should have...

A decade.  I remember feeling like a decade was a long time at one point but September 11th doesn't feel like it was a decade ago.  It feels so current and I'm afraid the reasons for this aren't what we would have wanted back in 2001.  Since then we've added wars, recession, out of touch politics and politicians and waste in more ways than I can even count.  Right after that fateful day it felt like We, in our Collective Soul As The Human Race all vibrated together, feeling like anything was possible.  Feeling like we could build anything, love anyone and right any wrong.

But where are we today?

I don't know my neighbors save for those in my hallway.  Money has been cut for practically everything and it has impacted my own life in major ways.  I've given up on politics and politicians - I just can't handle the layers and layers of spin, sugar coating and down right lies.  I'm glad to have been born an American but that's because it's all I've ever known and I've been given many entitlements from this side of the "border."  Who knows what my life would have been like had I been born an Austrian, a Frenchman or an African Maasi.

In the past ten years I've learned that borders are money-lines, most truths are lies and no one owns anything - not land nor buildings nor diamond rings.  It's all temporarily "ours" and ownership is an idea, not an right.  It all goes away and it all should because in the end, none of it really matters.

What does matter then?  That's easy for me to answer.

Peace.  Love.  Equality.  Fairness.  Abundance for all people (yes, it is possible).  An end to AIDS.  An end to stress.  An end to slavery, starvation and corruption.  An end to disconnectedness.  A return to our collective soul.  One Soul.  One humanity.

And that's what the next decade of my life will be about, no matter who is in the White House, the Kremlin, British Parliament or the apartment upstairs.  They are all just like me and I think more and more of them will learn this over the next ten years.  Here's to faith and here's to the kind of solidarity of purpose we all felt after September 11th - and a return to that seed which was planted that morning, not the twisted story of war and poverty and slavery and commercialism that has pushed us to the brink ten years later.