Love Letters ~ Soul On Ice

Excerpts from love letters taken from the book SOUL ON ICE, by Eldridge Cleaver. This is from the part in the book where Mr. Cleaver, who is in Folsom Prison, and attorney Beverly Axelrod exchange letters. The letters began September 5, 1965.  

E.C. “I feel impelled to express myself to you extravagantly, and words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs leap in my mind.  But I beat them down, refuse to write them, because it all seems so predictable and trite...What right have you to summon my soul from its slumber?......You have tossed me a lifeline.  If you only knew how I’d been drowning, how I’d considered that I’d gone down for the third time long ago, how I kept thrashing around in the water simply because I still felt the impulse to fight back and the tug of a distant shore...”

 

B.A writes back:  “...Believe this:  I accept you.  I know you little and I know you much, but whichever way it goes, I accept you.  Your manhood comes through in a thousand ways, rare and wonderful...I have no measuring stick.  I accept you...What an awesome thing it is to feel oneself on the verge of the possibility of really knowing another person.  Can it ever happen?  I’m not sure.  I don’t know that any two people can really strip themselves that naked in front of each other.  We’re so filled with fears of rejection and pretenses that we scarcely know whether we’re being fraudulent or real ourselves...” 

E.C. answers back:  “Your letters to me are living pieces, chunks of you, and are the most important things in my life...It only happens in books – or...Do you know what shameless thought just bullied its way into my consciousness? That, I deserve you, that I deserve to know you and to communicate with you...I seek a lasting relationship, something permanent in a world of change, in which all is transitory, ephemeral, and full of pain.  We humans, we are too frail creatures to handle such titanic emotions and deep magnetic yearnings, strivings and impulses… 

…The reason two people are reluctant to really strip themselves naked in front of each other is because in doing so they make themselves vulnerable and give enormous power over themselves one to the other.  How awful, how deadly, how catastrophically they can hurt each other, wreck and ruin each other forever!...Better to maintain shallow, superficial affairs; that way the scars are not too deep, no blood is hacked from the soul.  You beautifully – O, how beautifully!! – spoke...of ‘What an awesome thing it is to feel oneself on the verge of the possibility of really knowing another person...’ and...I do not believe that a beautiful relationship has to always end in carnage.  I do not believe that we have to be fraudulent and pretentious,...I know that sometimes people fake on each other out of genuine motives to hold onto the object of their tenderest feelings.  They see themselves as so inadequate that they feel forced to wear a mask in order to continuously impress the other.  I do not want to ‘hold you’, I want you to ‘stay out' of your own need for me.  ...It takes time and deeds, and this involves trust, it involves making ourselves vulnerable to each other, to strip ourselves naked, to become sitting ducks for each other...I am vulnerable and defenseless and I make myself a duck for you.  ...And it is not a fraud, forced out of desperation...”  

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We Travel Together ~ Passengers On A Spaceship

We travel together,
passengers on a little spaceship,
dependent on its vulnerable supplies of air and soil...
preserved from annihilation only by the care,
the work, and I will say, the love, we give
our fragile craft.
Adlai Stevenson

♥ What Was Given ♥

Music and lyrics by Sandra Hammel

This is a call to love the planet ♡

 ~ It’s not ours

To hurt, hurt, kill, kill

Free to not care.

Why so hard to love what was given?

We could heal what we hurt,

hurt our Mother Nature.

This is our home

That we’re to share with other life.

Life, not death, to share, with creation.

Why so hard to love what was given?

Given to all life’s generations,

not just you,

you

and I.

Will our life, be the death

of what was given

to all creation?

This is a cry to love the planet ♡

 ~ It never was ours

to take, steal, hurt, kill,

destroy beauty.

Dona nobis pacem,

Pa-a-a-a-cem.

Do-na no-bis pacem.

Do-o-o-na, do-o-o-na, do-na nobis pacem.

Why so hard to love what was given?
We're just passing through.

♫ What Was Given ♫ by Sandra Hammel

❤ Music ♫ May 5 ~ July 1, 2016 ❤

❤ Lyrics ♫ October 2, 2017 ❤

I wrote the music first. Finally worked out the words. I wanted to record myself for the purpose of Mimi Lenox's annual Peace effort for November 4.  I recorded this late November 4th and didn't like the few efforts. But, here is one of those. It is not perfect. But neither is this world.  

 

300,000 pieces of space junk

After decades of using space for communication and defense, we’ve left it pretty polluted: there are now an estimated 300,000 pieces of space junk a centimeter or bigger in Earth’s orbit. Some are deactivated, decades-old satellites, but most are shards of metal — the result of rockets that exploded after use, or satellites that collided. Experts are worried that growing levels of space junk could make some orbits difficult or impossible to use, and space agencies are requiring satellite operators to be more careful with their equipment after it's decommissioned. Source

  Be brave.

Live out loud.

Let your light shine.

Save The Child In You

It takes courage to be true to yourself.

It takes a lot to be brave enough to live in your vulnerability.

Being cowardly is easy. Until it's not.

.Any cowardly moment is a moment spent alienated from our own true being

Pretending is not brave. It is just pretending. We put on an act when we feel vulnerable because we get afraid of being rejected for the real truth that we feel. That we are. We afford rejection of pretentious behavior because it is the pretending image we put out that gets rejected.   But.    It feels like a fraud  

We are most free when we can keep our vulnerability

Save the child in you.

Save the child in you.

COMING OUT AS BEING DIFFERENT

~ FROM EXPECTATIONS INSIDE A FAMILY 

Growing up, I never heard a conversation about gay people, only a stray comment in my family. It was easy to glean from this, that it was "forbidden" or in the least, unacceptable to think being gay is natural. As an adult, it became clear that homosexuality is totally unacceptable inside my family. I, personally, accept that no one chooses, but is born, whatever way you and I are. Being born straight, being born other than straight, weren't supposed to be thought of as equally acceptable in my family.

I have been the outsider inside my family. I didn't choose this role. It was appointed by my family members. Seems like for the whole of my life. Because I am different in what I believe. And don't believe. To me, whatever way a person is, is equally acceptable. Saying this inside my family, actually takes courage. Seems like this shouldn't be true, at my age. But age doesn't change your family's expectations. 

For me, human rights is an important issue: acceptance, welcoming. Encouraging. I want to be a part of a world that doesn't make 13 or 18 year olds, someone of any age, feel they aren't fully worthy of acceptance for who they are. The result of society, religion or family judgment can easily become anxiety, depression, or suicide.

I love being fully present, fully me. Fully alive. The isolation, the alienation, the despair to have to hide who I am, because who I am doesn't fit the acceptable person, others deem me to project, can easily suck the vibrant life out of me. Being myself inside my family has never been easy. I'm considered to be a sinner. Not by me. Just by the others in the family.

A child is just a child. No child says, I think I will be heterosexual. Or something else. Being born into a world that decides who is and isn't acceptable due to things that by birth are what they are, can create a confusing world and a hole that is hard to live in. I want to be part of a world that loves people for who they are. And supports, honors, appreciates, heals, not denigrates or dismisses souls. That is a world we can dream of only if every soul is welcome, nurtured to truly, wholly, be who they are born to be.

There are choices. We can choose to love with judgment or choose to love without judgment. But love that judges cripples. We make decisions every day that bring light to the world. Or contribute to the world - by way of speech and behavior - that creates an atmosphere that is inhibiting or limiting to someone else.

I am coming out to say this deliberately. Because remaining in the background is to be part of the problem of which many young people feel unaccepted, alienated and have to hide their true feelings. I feel this is not healthy mentally, which follows, is not healthy physically. Because I also think mind and body health is connected and one affects the other.

The article Russell Tovey - the unlikely lad is 3 years old. 

Excerpt from the article: At school he always had girlfriends. It was only when he got into his mid-teens that he realised they didn't do that much for him, that he was attracted to boys. "Looking back, I always knew. But you don't really know till you get to a point where you go, oh, that's what makes me happier." At 18, he came out to his family and his father tried to talk him out of it. "My dad was of that generation where it's changeable if you get it early enough."

How would he have changed you? "Hormone therapy or shock treatment, all of these horror things that you watch. You see, they had all this Aids thing. It was all, 'Don't die of ignorance.' My nan thought being gay was a disease. It's just a generational, educational thing. And Dad was like, 'I wish you would have told us sooner because we would have done something about it.'" Were you surprised by the reaction? "No, I was prepared for it." Was it based on prejudice or fear? "Not knowing. Not knowing anybody else who is gay, not experiencing it, hearing of people dying of Aids and seeing, say, Larry Grayson on TV and thinking, that's it. Seeing gay men appear in stories in which they were miserable and sad. And I think he felt sad and worried for me, that I'd have a terrible life if I made this choice. And he thought it was a choice, because being straight is so natural, why would you want to be anything different from that?"

It's touching how determined Tovey is to understand his family's fears of his sexuality. "You want your kids to be perfect and at that time it felt like it was an imperfection. Whereas now a lot of people are like [enthusiastic voice], 'Are you? Cool! Well, make sure you look after yourself.' It seems like it's a different time. I sense that with younger generations, when they have after-school clubs where they talk about being gay. I meet a lot of kids who've come out at school, and I'm like, 'What! You came out at school! Did you get bullied?' 'No!'" He smiles. He's just remembered something that amuses him. "My mum used to think it was the pill that made you gay. There was too much estrogen in the water, and people started taking the pill in the 60s and it made everybody gay.

Personally, I believe this world is still homophobic. I know my family is. Can you imagine, if those of us who are heterosexual had to have the conversation with our parents that we are heterosexual? Though, I didn't have the pressure for that conversation, I still managed to be the one in exile from the family. Anyone who stepped outside the limits of my family's beliefs had to make it on her own. I don't regret it, in the end. But, it allows me to have a little understanding of anyone who has had to make their own way. 



September 16, 2016, I started a facebook page Russell Tovey Planet 

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I now blog about Rafa Nadal exclusively at Rafa Nadal Bring Back Sleeveless  

May Sound Unoriginal, But It's HOW I FEEL

I know this may sound unoriginal, but it is how I feel.  I love justice.  When I see justice denied, I am sick.  When I witness any justice win, no matter how small the act, my heart soars, higher than the height of any bird that takes to its wings.  My heart soars to be with the stars of the sky.  I take this as a human condition...that we all want justice.  Not just for ourselves.  But for each and every human being that breathes in oxygen and breathes out carbon dioxide. 

What if this is not true?  That each human being doesn’t want justice for every other human being?  I do see behaviors that apparently are jealous enough, power-hungry enough, greedy enough, spiteful enough - that the order of the day is to put someone down to lift themselves to some level of self-importance that sustains them one more moment.  

The ultimate measure of a man

is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, 

but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

                                                                           —Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929 - 1968

LEAVING a MARK ~ RELATIONSHIP GIFT

Each person in your life brings something. Many leave a mark that never goes away. It becomes a part of you. Even those that needed to leave your life, for you, for him, for....some reasons that finally made you realize fighting so hard to make it work, was not as life-worthy, as reasons that weighed in and made it known to you, that it had to end. Even though, you know this, it is still hard. And one day at a time, of just taking a step after a step, you get through the thicket of emotional stresses, that come with change. It's most likely a good human characteristic, that it is hard to say good bye, even though, it is the healthy, right thing to choose.  

 

A past one, that had to end, though I hung on trying so very hard to make it work, now, after 15 years of much necessary intertwined life, but not together - it feels so right. To be alone. Without him in my life. So happy I hung in there and made the separation work. But, the marks that are left linger on. And I am so grateful for the parts that became me. What becomes you, needs you to welcome it, accept it. Music is pretty much my life. But he introduced me to music, I didn't have in my experience, yet. Now, it is mine. Though, he is not a part of my daily life. ~ No love, no friendship Can cross the path of our destiny Without leaving some mark on it forever. Francois Mauriac

     

In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord
Well if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand
I've seen your face before my friend, but I don't know if you know who I am
Well I was there and I saw what you did, I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you've been
It's all been a pack of lies
And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
Well I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
Well I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord
Well I remember, I remember, don't worry, how could I ever forget
It's the first time, the last time we ever met
But I know the reason why you keep your silence up, oh no you don't fool me
Well the hurt doesn't show, but the pain still grows
It's no stranger to you and me
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
Well been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord
Well I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord
Well I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord
Well I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord.

  

I now blog about Rafa Nadal exclusively at
 Rafa Nadal Bring Back Sleeveless 

My previous blog:

ilovemylifebrothersandsisters

 

MUSIC IS LIKE WATER ~ SANDRA HAMMEL

I like to feel at one with anything that is good. 

And when I do, it is a feeling that I am in a sacred space, 

a feeling of communion with the universe.

Music makes me whole.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

My previous blog: 
ilovemylifebrothersandsisters 

INSTEAD OF CHILDREN GROWING UP WITHOUT A SENSE OF WORTH

IT WOULD BE WISE TO HELP EACH CHILD KNOW THEY ARE WORTHY 

Many TV ads and many facebook posts are for the kind treatment of animals, pets. Those who have been mistreated, neglected, abused, abandoned. I agree that animals and pets should be treated with kindness and loving care.

But at the same time, I know that there are thousands, probably millions of children who are mistreated, neglected, abused, witness things that no child should be witnessing, they are abandoned, are sold (some by their own parents), are sex slaves (some by their own parents), are married off when only 8 years old or younger, are taken from their parent(s) forced to be child soldiers and forced to kill others, the list could go on and on. Much of this happens in the USA. And I think probably most countries have children who suffer childhoods of great voids and survival needs that aren't met.

But, we don't see ads, explaining the lives of these children. We don't post about them on facebook. Because children legally that are in foster care, for example, cannot have their lives laid out for public consumption, notice. It is called "right to privacy". But in many ways, these children continue in damaging lives, because this so-believed saving of their "rights to privacy", means that we, the public, don't know, don't do anything to help just one of these human beings, don't witness the hell that these children live 24/7. I know personally stories of a few of these children. As a teacher for 30 years, I got to know some of these children. I adopted one of them. I have read the file. It is excruciatingly painful for me because of the empathy that I feel.

And I know that many of these children don't get one posting for them on facebook, a posting at a Huffington Post, an article in a newspaper or magazine. They are simply unknown to us. Their pain is not even conscious often to themselves, because it is called "Life" for them. They know nothing else but the need to find ways to survive daily.

I ask you personally, if you have gotten this far in this post, to at least think of these children today. Tomorrow. And each day after, say a word in your heart for them. Apparently, trusting that God will take care of them, isn't enough. Peace won't come until we give our children on the planet the basic needs to eat, sleep, dress warm in cold weather and have at least one person in their young lives who thinks they are worthy. We say we don't want abortions, but we allow "this" to happen to those children who weren't aborted, but they certainly are invisible to us in our hearts and minds.

Many older foster children who are free for adoption, don't get adopted because people prefer to adopt babies. In this video, are older foster children who were adopted. But many never have a home, know love, or a sense that they are worthy for anyone to love them. I send out love to them, each one and all.

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ilovemylifebrothersandsisters