Life in Abundance

People keep telling me that being hit by a bus is awful, but I gotta tell you, the life that follows the death of normality, what survives the mundane terrors of the commercialised mind-set, is boundless and abundant, life everlasting.

Tee hee.

Y'know, I was always fond of the Jesus stories and messages in Sunday School, peace and love being all important, love thy enemy, love and care for everybody, turn the other cheek, trust in divine providence, not blaming anyone for being different, not judging people's worth based on their compliance to some authoritarian behaviour code, all that lovely peace and love stuff that meant there was just no reason for war or guns or killing or hurting people or being mean.

The grown-ups told me I was just being a naive child when I wanted to know why these principles were not being applied in the real world, where government authorities locked people up and went to war and the grown-ups made it all possible by voting for them and giving them their taxes, and everything seemed to be about getting more stuff, and protecting the stuff you had, and making sure no one stole it, with locks and keys and fearfulness, and supporting the police who attacked anyone stealing stuff.

Now Christianity has become synonymous with gay-bashing, with limiting love, and with a ferocious pre-occupation with fetal cells while real breathing humans are being bombed.

While I am more aware of the pledge I made as a child because it just makes so much sense, to love the creator of my reality with all my heart and mind and body, and to love everybody else as much as I loved myself, for we all reflections of the same divine creator and creation. I'm paraphrasing the Two Commandments of Christ, to love God with all your heart and soul and body, and to love your neighbour as yourself. Nothing about telling people what they must'n't do with their senstive parts, or keeping women out of power, or not using condoms, despite what the Pope and the Christian fundamentalists who have hijacked HIV prevention money say. (I'm refering here to the deadly ABC programs inflicted in various countries in Africa and Asia, by the US. ABC: Abstinence, Be faithful, and if you are a failure at that, Condoms. 50% of the US funding had to spent on Abstinence promotion, and, consequent to this tragic and hypocritic failure to engage with human reality, AIDS deaths increased devastatingly.)

Enough Americans have finally had enough death from war to say enough to their government, and turf out Bush's party's control in both houses. I was so sad they did not do this two years ago, and us Aussies at our last election, for the outgoing governments had started a war without proper justification even; They were in violation of what surely everyone would agree is a basic tenet of social living, "Thou shalt not kill," on a massive scale. They (the majority of we the people) haven't taken action until now, when Bush has killed almost as many Americans as Bin Laden (presuming 9/11 wasn't just another murderous CIA conjob), and that's not counting the far greater number of Iraqis killed from the American invasion, around half a million, which probably trounces the deathtoll of Saddam.

Still, justice will out, and there will be more horror exposed as the investigations get underway to ensure an accounting for all the torture, civil rights violations, lethal deceitfulness, wars, kickbacks, and war profiteering.

Unlike Nuremberg, we won't be trying the losers, and blaming Their society for Nazi nastiness.

We did this.

We, the English speaking people of European decent who are the vast majority of the citizenry of America, Great Britain, and Australia.

May we learn the awful lessons of history that seem to get hammered closer and closer to us.

Violence is always, always, always wrong. Oh, alright, except if you have to defend your children against a knife wielding maniac. But as a systematic approach, violence is wrong. War is wrong. Police guns are wrong. Police batons are wrong. Police tasers are wrong. Police using peaceful vegatarian quadrupeds as a physical threat is so, so wrong. Police training carnivorous quadropeds to attack people is wrong too. Actually, from a Christian point of view, not the Pope's, but according to Sunday School stories about the prince of peace, Police are wrong.

They were wrong when I saw them as a kid on TV beating up Vietnam War protestors. They were wrong when I saw them hassling aborginal people in Perth. They were wrong when they hassled me as a young adult, when it was illegal for a male person to kiss another male person, with increasing penatlies for heavy petting and actual sex. They are wrong when they hassle sex workers, and they were wrong when they hassled me for sex work and locked me up for same "crime". They are wrong when they hassle people for having mood-improving substances banned by authoritarians, and they were wrong when they hassled me for same "crime". They are wrong when they prowl constantly around the Block, perhaps protecing their sanctioned dealers against free lancers. ( I can't work out what the fuck else they're doing.) And they were wrong when they chased, sorry, followed, that poor young aboriginal kid on a bike, to his death.

They are wrong when they lock up people for working without the permission of the authoritarian state, they are wrong when they lock up and terrorise refugees who have come here fleeing terror.

The values we must promote as a society, and teach our children, and show by example, are the values of being loving and caring and forgiving, and valuing human beings far more than property and territory.

I live my life now according to the unrealistic and naive Sunday School Prince of Peace and Love, and I am rewarded with life in abundance.

I live on the Block, with the outcasts and "lepers" according to the Australian mainstream, the people always hassled by the police, aboriginal people, homeless people, drug users, hippies, and feral intellectuals. Our joy in the reality of our shared humanity is less diminished by the glamour of mainstream conspicuous consumption. We have less to gain by pretention, and so gain much more from honesty and respect for our common humanity.

I've been visiting people detained by our draconian Immigration regime, and been immeasurably rewarded from following Christ's invitation to visit him, that is, any prisoner, in jail. I've met some amazing people in Villawood detention, and been a part of some of the processes that set most of them free now, and I am hopeful of the result of having been a link between, would you believe, Cardinal George Pell, and a Christian convert needing refuge from the death sentence passed on him as an "apostate" to Islam.

Now staying with me in my guest room (where the PC is, thus limiting my blogging opportunities, but I just have to be less lazy when the opportunity is there, or just accept the other things I can do with my time, and accept the occassional long wandering monologue when the time is right)... sorry, as I was saying, a refugee from Bangladesh is staying here.

At the behest of a fellow voluntary refugee support worker, I sponsored Motahar out of Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, so that he can continue his work systematically exposing the irregularities and illegal practises and human rights violations inherent in Immigration Detention and denial of work rights or income support to people. It's very exciting to know how close I am to the forefront of this important battle for human dignity. One day, Godwilling, we will as a society agree to stop treating borders as more important than humans.

What I knew as a child instinctively, and had reinforced by the Sunday School stories, is truer than ever. Our humanity is more important than the rules we make, and we must prioritise humanity/human rights and Love over any authoritarianism. "The Sabbath is made for Humanity, not Humanity for the Sabbath." I expect the authoritarian so-called Christians will say this is too far a stretch, but I know what feels true in my heart, and the spirit is far, far, more important than the word... according to the Word, at least ; )

And look at the fruits of their labour. War, famine, greed, misery, fear and loathing.

The "grown ups" are wrong, and the naive selfless childish understanding of the teachings of the teacher of absolute love is right. But even the grown ups are slowly seeing how right the child is.

It excites me to see humanity dawning in this species still struggling out of our hairless ape brutalities, and it excites me to be here carrying a little candle of truth and love, and lighting other candles, as we prepare at the end of the night for the dawning of the All-loving sunshine.

My lack of physical love bothers me less, as I massage myself, and let the sun and wind and earth and water touch and move my skin, and enjoy dancing for its own sake, and to share this joy, and not bother looking around for the most attractive guy, when there's no one in sight that really flexes my pubes. And I'm more patient and more accepting of being single, because the guys that flex my pubes are just so rare, and hey, all my life is possibly missing is an absolute angel, and in the meantime I am enjoying appreciating my own angelic nature.

My divine androgyny is only for those who can truly love it, and most folk are still playing gender-differentiated games. I am glad to be free of others' unexamined scripts. I am happy to be the author of my own happiness, and offer only what I have and what I am, with no attempt even to present a glamour of normativity. I am free to dance, without inhibition. I am free to feel Shiva dancing in me, and joy in all creation.

I may not have the comforts of the mainstream, but I think those comforts are just illusionary, and, the more keenly aware I am of the true nature of normal people's romantic relationships, the more sure I am that I dodged a bullet in not having anything like that, based on self and mutual delusion and restriction.

And every now and again my pubes will flex in response to some cute boy, or indeed be set on overdrive when I dance with the East Asian boys at Arq, but I accept that most other people have romantic agendas I don't fit, and that's okay.

And She-He moves in mysterious says, taking beautiful people out of my life, Kenn and Marc this year, and bringing beautiful people into my life, like my best friend, and my other friends, and Rani, another Villawood visitor and refugee supporter whose birthday is tonight (Yay! I get to attend a gathering of people who care about people before profit. Social justice activist circles are good creative and fun and truly comfortable social circles, in my experience.), and my intellectual housemate, and my intellectual house guest (Ah! Sorry norms, but brains needs brains, both for stimulation, and for support for those living in this end of the normal distribution curve, from where Channel 9 and most of mainstream society looks stupid or mean.), and She-He gives me Futurama and Jon Stewart and Father Bob and Triple J and Captaim America leading the rebellion against a repressive American regime in the current "Civil War" storyline in comic books, and we're all watching the Simpsons and South Park, and fuck the grown-ups pointy restrictions, authoritarianism is morally bankrupt and intellectually ridiculous, pleasure is good, people are good, childish niceness overules "grown-ups" small-minded fear, and love is supreme.

My cup runneth over!

And it's probably as inevitable as surviving being hit by a bus that someone will come into my life with mutual pube flexing.

: )

God bless us, everyone, with love for all.

Amen!