A New Level

 

 

A New Level

Last evening I was drawn into a Facebook discussion. The discussion began after a friend shared my status post concerning how differently the presidents of Central and South America received the news that Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela had died, compared to the United States.

Someone posted that the reason the US Government didn’t like Chavez was because he wouldn’t accept “worthless” US dollars for oil.

Someone else responded to the “worthless” dollar post.

I suggested that while their discussion had merit, the issue of the United States rejection of the Bolivarian Revolution ran deeper than the relative value of the dollar.

My exact post was -

“…It's really deeper than that… The US cannot afford to let us know what is really happening in places like Venezuela because it would show us the way to reject and redesign the dysfunctional system under which we live.”

Both the “dollar” posters completely ignored the issue I was raising and incorporated my response into their much narrower discussion.

I continued to try to get the discussion on to deeper issues -

“…There is value in what you are discussing. But in the final analysis you are looking and discussing symptoms not the underlying problems. What you're trying to do is butterfly an arterial wound.”

I could not get them to step back and look deeper.

The discussion moved me to this final post -

“…Entrenched, worked and hobbled. If everyone you see is limping, everything must be fine. All you need is denial strong enough so you can no longer see those who walk upright, with no limp at all…”

And to this visual -

 

I awoke this morning with Albert Einstein’s words running through my mind- the words that I incorporated into the wonderful picture by Street Art Utopia, that is at the head of this post.

"The problems we currently face can't be solved at the level of thinking that created them."

Nothing Quicksilver Times believes, supports, or does is more relevant than what this sentence tells us.

Before we even begin to look to the fundamental issues which we must address to create real change, we must find A New Level Of Thinking.

A New Level Of Thinking.

In the new book, White Man Dancing - Grief, God, and a Unified Theory, (Which hopefully will be published in the coming weeks.) there is a section that speaks of the teachings of Sri Auribindo, 1870-1950. An Indian Mystic who lived much of his life in Paris, his vision of the future of man, so influenced by his integration into western culture and thought, clearly defined the advent of a “New Man.” Or in the language of today a “New S/He”

He taught that this new “S/He” create, and be created by, an Evolution of Consciousness and a Conscious Evolution.

He told us to watch for the signs.

If we look at what we are moving towards today, we can see the potential for change.

Conscious Evolution will require learning to think with a new panoptic perspective, permitting us to view all parts and elements of our moment. This will be a practical evolution. One brought about by our commitment to personal and World Community growth. It will come through the exercise of our expanding perspectives.

It begins with this moment. We can stand clear of the trench in which we have been hobbled. We can look outward, we can see. It’s not magic or beyond our reckoning.

And, We are not meant to do this Alone! -

 

Together.

The other half of the new equation, Evolution of Consciousness, can only be done together. As I grow, as I open, my connecting to you is as inevitable as breathing in after breathing out. Our paths to understanding and experiencing our unique, personal path reveal, and our growing recognition that while each of our paths is unique in the history of the universe, the transcendence we open to and recognize is One.

And as inevitable as our connection is, we have come to recognize that without this Evolution of Consciousness we cannot make real changes out here in the endlessly changing world.

Evolution of Consciousness, Conscious Evolution. One leads inevitably, dependent yet independently, to the other. Another in the endless repetitions and variations of duality.

And from that balance, in the experience of the light and the darkness, in that middle way, comes experience of transcendence.

Which we’ll talk about again. And again.

love,

bill





My Denial, or Strength



My Denial, or Strength

My father was seventy-two when he retired. He came home, sat down in his favorite chair, and was dead by seventy-six.

Yesterday, after a chaotic meeting that was aimed at designing a fundraising event to raise four thousand dollars for the Sena Foundation/Quicksilver Times video transfer and Google+ On Air project, I overheard a conversation between a volunteer (who is a dear friend) and my wife who were walking behind me.

“We can get this money.” the volunteer said in sotto voce, “It’s important, especially to,” pause - gesture towards me implied , “him. Can’t let him get,”

then in super sotto, “…you know.”

Response, “I, know…”

Depressed.

How strong is my denial? I can’t get more than two or three people to read my blog, my Facebook and Google+ posts are virtually unread.

My attempt to make use of Google+ On Air has been a struggle, and I can no longer maintain belief that the folks helping me have any real interest in the project.

Then there is the book - White man Dancing - Grief, God, and a Unified Theory. Out of over a dozen readers, ranging from the closest, dearest people in my life to virtual strangers, only one person, my editor, has even finished the book. Except for my editor no one except my wife has even been able to give me feedback.

Depression? No. The real issue is my denial.

Lately I find myself taking small comfort in a Facebook post I saw a few months ago -

“Stand up for what you believe - even when you are the only one standing.”

At the moment I can more realistically adhere to another saying, one I’ll create for the occasion -

“If you stand with a group of ten thousand awaiting the rising of the sun, and you are the only one facing west, MAYBE YOU ARE JUST WRONG.”

Recently I tried to look back and remember how long it’s been since I have been involved in Resistance to what I saw going on around me.

I usually trace it to an early spring noon time when I was about twelve. I was sitting on our front porch after lunch trying to slow down time so I wouldn’t have to go back to school. (Yes in those ancient days we came home for lunch.) I remember thinking about what my Missouri Synod Lutheran church was teaching us in catechism, Sunday School, and from the pulpit. At the time they were still not totally convinced that Roman Catholics weren’t going to hell.

Then came what I later learned was an epiphany. How could I accept what they were teaching me when I knew nothing about what others believed?

That day I rebelled.

There have been periods of my life that I believed that I had turned my back on the rebellion, but I came to know that those were the periods when I needed to process and integrate what came before.

When I look back, sixty-two years now, I remember the fire. The outrage. The naiveté.

I have stashed away in a metal box in the corner of an unused closet a small format, hard covered, brown three ring binder. It’s from those early times. Poetry mostly. Some prose. All of it sophomoric, and all of it from the heart.

I never want those words to be seen. Yet, you notice, I don’t throw the words away.

One poem caught the heart of the struggle. Actually it was published in my hometown newspaper all those years ago. And even after six decades, for all that it lacks as poetry, it still defines the struggle -

To Lift The Mask

The world lives on and all its’ creatures here within,

Pass, though still as strangers,

Lost within themselves.

And man, his conquests spewed about him,

Stumbles onward,

Seeking life,

And knowing not himself.

From birth to death he totters on,

His path marked well with signs to guide his way,

And n’er a thought to lift the mask

And look within his heart.

I think perhaps that fate,

Its’ fingers intertwining men with time

And time with men,

Has cast me back ten thousand years

And set me down to live and die,

Amidst a world of modern men

With pre-historic minds.

These minds,

To which the universe is black and white

And only after self reproach and bitter qualms

Will let a shade of gray slip into view,

Will scream in mortal anguish lest they see

A bit of truth.

Their superstitious faith rewards them

Asking only for the freedom of their minds,

And who among them cries with courage,

“Life, Death. Nothing more, nothing less.”

I stand, my solitude complete within their mass,

And ask to live a life of Truth.

To love, and love to love,

To feed upon its precious goodness,

To seek it out and know its’ truth where ere the path may lead.

Then let me say in death, “It is the end,

And nothing more,

For it is only truth.”

But man shall strip me naked,

And the world will put the mark upon my head.

Yet as they strip and mark me,

Their fear will tell them

I seek truth.

Ten thousand years

And superstitions long since shed,

And morals long discarded,

Will bear the burden of my proof,

That I seek naught but truth.

But I shall lie

Now dust these many years,

And those that did destroy me

Are now dead and cannot know.

The poem seems without hope.

Now I know the paths’ direction, the nature of temporal and transcendent love. I have knowledge and experience of Love. And I have hope.

My hope is for the future.

In this moment are my reactions Denial? They are either strength or delusion. Whether my words hold promise and awakening, or are me simply pissing into a hurricane, I guess I really can’t know.

Unless, of course, one of you reallly smart folks come and enlighten me, or disillusion me, or just bust a cap in my ass.

There is a reality here too, having to do with my father. He sat down and died. The reality for me is that if I give over to the possible reality that while my words are true, I really am pissing into a hurricane and all the words are just a waste of time and effort - if I sit down - does my old buddy Death come sit on my shoulder? “How ‘bout now, Billy? God (You should excuse the expression) knows you know the way.”

I just don’t know. I want to say that if I sit down I’ll look to other endeavors, but I don’t know. I’m seventy-four. Its been a long haul already.

I don’t remember what it feels like not to be a part of this Resistance. I don’t know how to be without it centering, focusing, and teaching me. And I don’t know how to be in the Resistance without reaching out. Without trying with my imperfect and after all these years maybe, still, sophomoric words, to share.

There is also the often repeated justification for reaching out, the one I’ve been repeating for decades. The one that until this moment I’ve successfully blocked from my scattered and often less than coherent mind -

It’s not my job to convince anyone of anything, nor to get a single person to read or hear. Judging by numbers is, finally, an act of ego.

There it is then.

I can’t sit down. At least not today. So if my words don’t make sense, are without meaning, continue as you have - pay little mind. I’ll just put ‘um out here in the knowledge that to some few folks on this day and in this moment they will serve.

love,

bill

　

　

 

“MORE!” How deep is the dysfunction?

 

 

 

 

“MORE!” How deep is the dysfunction?

In the February, 2013 issue of Wired Magazine there is an article discussing product design, The Simplex Complex, by Mat Honan. In it he writes -

“…Travel back in time to use your parents’ first microwave and you’ll likely see a box with three buttons (High, Medium, Low) and a timer dial. By contrast, one of LG’s current models boasts 33 buttons… None of these make my popcorn pop faster or taste better. Why do products become more complex as they evolve?…”

He then quotes Mike Monteiro, author of Design Is A Job -

“…We live in a culture of consumption, where quality is associated with more.”

So the driving force behind much product design isn’t making the product better, it’s to make the product look like it has “MORE.”

That our culture is fundamentally based on and motivated by the concept of “MORE” is indisputable. That that most of the planet is now infected with that dysfunctional concept is equally beyond question.

 

 

Rewarding greed, using MORE as the standard for determining success, has had a debilitating effect on every aspect of our personal lives as well as our social, political, economic, and spiritual institutions. And now, if we look closely and heed Mr. Honan and Mr. Monteiro, we can see how this dysfunction even affects the products we use.

 

 

How deep is the dysfunction of “MORE?” Deeper than we have imagined.

But perhaps more important - How has this happened?

And ultimately - What can we do about it?

First -

How Did This Happen?

To understand how we could become so addicted to a concept that brings us frustration, physical and emotional dis-ease, and lack of fulfillment we have to look first not at our institutions, but into our own hearts.

Stay with me here.

Often when you read about opening your heart, finding your bliss, reaching a state of perpetual happiness there follows a series of steps that have no real basis, at least to you, in the real world.

This, however is real. And rather than “Pie In The Sky” this relates to REALITY.

It starts with Death. It starts with loss.

Here’s the pared down version - because to fully understand and begin to open to REALITY takes longer than a few minutes reading a blog post.

1. All loss triggers a grief response.

2. Everyone experiences loss throughout life.

3. Birth is a loss. (Actually conception may be the first loss, but that’s a topic for another day.)

4. Since at birth we have no words to explain our loss or to hear a way through the grief, that loss remains unresolved.

5. From birth we look outward trying to understand what the **** is going on out here.

6. As we develop words, and continue to experience loss we begin to understand what loss brings.

7. We don’t understand why it comes, we don’t understand how to stop it, it hurts, and it’s scary.

8. At the same time we begin to recognize something else. LOVE.

9. Like Loss and grief, we don’t understand it, but it feels good.

10. One of our first rationalizations, and a completely understandable one, is that since loss and grief are hurtful we should push it away, ignore it, DENY it - as soon as possible.

11. And since Love makes us feel good we should hold on to it.

12. Loss and grief continue to come to us.

13. We recognize it and, as best we can, set it aside. We hold it beyond our conscious moment.

14. Grief can be denied. Grief symptoms cannot.

15. When enough grief is denied the symptoms begin to leak out around our very best efforts to DENY.

16. But because we are no longer aware of our unresolved grief we assign those symptoms, wrongly, to what is happening in our moment.

17. Dysfunction follows.

18. As this happens we are searching for LOVE.

19. We learn about it.

20. One of the lessons it that it leaves. Always. Leaves. Sometimes it is through death.

21. Because we need it we try to hold on to it. Own it. Do whatever we need to have it. But still it leaves.

22. It’s hard not to believe there’s something wrong with us.

23. As time passes and more losses come and are denied it takes more and more energy to hold back the grief.

24. For many of us all we have time and energy to do is to hold back the grief.

25. We learned another lesson waaay back when this whole process was just beginning - Once the denial took hold and the love was inconsistent, nothing around us was meaningful.

26. Then we discovered that Ice Cream was good. More Ice Cream was better. MORE.

27. The satisfaction of more was so temporary. But we had the answer.

28. MORE. MORE!

29. Etc.

30. Etc.

31. The key to whatever kind of more we opted for, food, drink, relationships, education, money, power - each on its own a normal, natural part of life - ultimately could not fulfill us.

32. And as we looked and lived outward, we created a world that fit with our DENIAL.

Each of us can look to where we are individually on this Denial scale.

It’s the foundation upon which our lives and institutions are based.

You are a part of it. Only you can determine where on that scale you live.

　

Second -

What can we do about this?

When we started to work with dying folks and their families thirty-five plus years ago we were looking for a way to more humanely, more lovingly share that last loss of the human life cycle. We weren’t looking to deal with global cultural issues, issues that would profoundly affect the way we live and the world community in which we live.

What we discovered about Loss and Grief in a human life cycle grew out of our own need to understand the lessons dying folks were teaching us.

We did learn. And today, while the path forward is defined, it is far from complete. We can’t, well at least I can’t, see where it will lead, but we definitely know how to begin.

What can we do?

We can come together and speak to our losses, help each other heal, recognize the incredible power which - at this amazing moment in human history - is there for us to exercise.

What can we do?

This too is a pared down version. What we can do can’t be defined in one blog post.

But Quicksilver Times at

www.quicksilvertimes.org, the Discussion Forum at the net site, Quicksilver Times Facebook page, the upcoming Quicksilver Times OnAir broadcasts, and this blog, are a place to start.

There are practical things to be done. Come. Ask questions. Help.


love,

bill 



 



Grandmas' Just Plain Wrong







 

 

 

 Grandmas' Just Plain Wrong

It’s occurred to me over the past few weeks that the content of this blog is missing an essential element.


Everything Quicksilver Times does, supports, shares, and recommends has at its core the lessons learned from the Death, Dying, Grief, and Loss movement. Quicksilver Times grew out of the experience of working with those who are dying. Whatever radical, Evolutionary Revolution Quicksilver Times now endorses was born out of the experience of death. Watching the light go out. That’s where personal evolution begins, and that’s where planetary evolution begins.

To understand that requires an understanding not only of what is so broken out here in our complex, misguided world, but how change is inexorably tied not first to changing the world, but to awakening each heart. Hopefully the book White Man Dancing – Grief, God, and a Unified Theory addresses the issues, from the micro to the macro. I hope that those who read this blog will read it when it is published – hopefully in a few weeks.

But for now, this blog must reflect the foundation upon which Quicksilver Times is based. In the coming months we’ll look at some fundamental grief issues and how they affect our ability to make changes in ourselves and in our World Community.

All this was brought to mind last evening by a post I saw on Facebook. If there is one place to start examining grief issues and how they affect us – micro to macro – all we need do is look to Denial.

If we can’t look at reality – we will never see it. Denial.

The following Facebook post is a perfect example of using words to seemingly help us deal with the darkness life sometimes brings. In reality the cutesy diversion does nothing except encourage denial, and guilt in the person experiencing loss, grief, confusion, and anger.

Here is the post and my response to it –

 

Grandmother says... Carrots, Eggs, or Coffee; "Which are you?"

A young woman went to her grandmother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She ...was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose.

Her grandmother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water. In the first, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs and the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil without saying a word.

In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her granddaughter, she asked, "Tell me what do you see?"

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.

She brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they got soft.She then asked her to take an egg and break it.

After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.

Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The granddaughter smiled, as she tasted its rich aroma. The granddaughter then asked. "What's the point,grandmother?"

Her grandmother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity--boiling water--but each reacted differently.

The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened.

The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water they had changed the water.

"Which are you?" she asked her granddaughter.

"When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?"

Think of this: Which am I?

Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity, do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?

Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff?

Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and a hardened heart?

Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you.

When the hours are the darkest and trials are their greatest do you elevate to another level?

---AUTHOR UNKNOWN —

　

Response -

Grandmas' just plain wrong. We aren't eggs, carrots, or coffee beans - each of which by the way, in this silly scenario, reacted according to their own unique, specific nature.

This foolish fable tells the granddaughter to take it to another level, but gives not one word of advice on how to do that.

All this succeeds in doing is making us feel guilty for becoming overwhelmed by the darkness life can bring us.

Here's what Grandma shoulda' done –

Grandma took her confused, grieving, angry, frightened, granddaughter in her arms. She held her close, rocked her back and forth, back and forth, like she did when the granddaughter was just a little girl.

"Oh, my darling girl. I love you so much. What you are feeling, the reactions you’re having, are natural. The struggles you're experiencing, the losses you have suffered, the fears that come sneaking into your mind in the dead of night, are beyond understanding. The darkness that comes feels like it's too much to bear. And sometimes it is.

"That's when you come here to me, and to all the folks who love you, and we'll walk through the darkness with you. One step at a time, one breath at a time.

"We won't be able to take away the pain, or banish the darkness, but you will not have to walk this path alone. I could tell you the darkness will pass, and it will, but right now that won't help, because it seems like it never will.

"We will never understand the darkness, but we can pass through it.

"Now you just sit here with me for a while and let me hold you. You go ahead and cry. Every tear is meant to be cried. I'll stay here. With you. I do so love you..."

The granddaughter cried, the grandmother rocked, and rocked and waited.... And loved.

　

We’ll talk more about such things in the weeks to come.



love, 



bill

　

　

　



Outline – From Inner Understanding to Activism

 

　

Outline – From Inner Understanding to Activism

Evolutionary Revolution 1A

　

Understanding cultural, societal issues is inexorably tied to defining our personal, individual issues. We can't work through issues out in the world until we have a clear idea of our own.

1. To understand the denial we've been inappropriately infected with requires first understanding the depth of grief process to which a human life cycle is exposed.

2. Every loss triggers a grief response. In balanced circumstances the response is commensurate with the loss.

3. Once we understand the reactionary, dysfunctional grief responses to the multitude of losses each of us experiences we can understand the sources of our dissatisfaction, frustration, and fear.

4. Unresolved grief never, ever goes away.

5. Recognizing, understanding, and working through our unresolved grief - becoming current with our grief - opens us to balanced experience of light/love.

6. Of equal importance, being current with our grief allows us to deal with the darkness, which is as inevitable an experience in our life as breathing out after breathing in, without resistance or guilt. The darkness is not one bit lighter or less painful, but we pass through it in the shared presence of our community.

7. In the balance of that environment we can for the first time open ourselves to the transcendence that is at the heart of love. It is then that we can open ourselves to our own, unique, individual spiritual path.

8. It's after we can direct our lives and follow our path that we can finally look about us and begin to see how the same process that has so damaged us, has mired our social, political, economic, and spiritual institutions in patterns counter to the needs of the people.

These few sentences can't share what needs to be shared. I have previously suggested it was possible to present an overview in an hour. I think I was wrong. It might well be more like two hours - and some extra time for questions. And that’s only a bare-bones explanation of the Overview.

Most often the objection I hear to even discussing these issues is –

“You want to change everything, do something about everything? It’s too much, it’s just too much.”

Here’s my response. I've repeated this at least a thousand times in the last thirty plus years. A Buddhist teacher once told me –

"... You want to make changes out there in the world? Look to your own heart. Then be totally in the moment. Be open to that moment. You will always know what needs to be done in that moment. Watch what happens. Watch the changes."

I've tried to live that advice every day since then. Everything that I’ve been involved in that has had positive results, at the St. Francis Center, the Fredericksburg Hospice, Sena Foundation, both books, Quicksilver Times, and in my personal life, has come as a result of that lesson. I've failed at it so often, still do every day, especially in all the love relationships I've been so lucky to have experienced. Failed so often and so many. But the failure was always mine, my self-absorption, my greed, my laziness. The lesson is true. And me? I'm working on it.

Can we do this? To quote a great man, “Yes we Can!”

The thing is… If you’re fulfilled, if your life is in balance and your world – the way you see it out there – is balanced and working well, go on about your business. But if you’re not fulfilled, if your world is as out of balance as your heart, take a look. Listen. Read. Think. Ask questions.

No one at Sena Foundation or Quicksilver Times wants your money. No one wants to control you, or manipulate you. It’s all about sharing.

There’s a new Translation in a state of becoming. Sena Foundation and Quicksilver Times, Remembered Gifts and New Directions and White Man Dancing – Grief, God, and A Unified Theory, are part of a Telling, as are the SF & QST Facebook pages and this blog.

You understand. You hear…



love,



bill



What to do, What to do?

 

What to do, What to do?

　

In response to recent posts I’ve received comments that ask – In the face of such massive, global-wide dysfunction, and given the almost incomprehensible complexity of making fundamental changes to world-wide systems, What Can We Do?

Here is what we can do -

First stand up. Speak out. Look, study, commit. Talk about it, think about it. Ask about it. Help us find like minded folks who will begin to come together to discuss how to:

1. Define the connection between denial of mortality and grief and the culture of "More"

2. Design an alternative to Capitalism

3. Define political process (Government) in a Quicksilver Times Evolutionary/Revolutionary environment

4. Find and create group affiliations.

5. Reach out to, and connect with world workers

6. Define specifics of population control

7. Design political action that is in keeping with concepts and values of QST

8. Define and create an environment of sexual freedom that will allow each individual to fully experience her/his sexuality.

9. Encourage spiritual perspective based on re-defined spiritual values identified on Quicksilver Times and in White Man Dancing – Grief, God, and a Unified Theory.

Each of these topics is essential – and more may need to be defined as the path unfolds – to making the fundamental changes that must be made to heal the systemic, planet wide dysfunction and move towards balance.

In addition to communicating via Internet we need to design meetings, workshops, and retreats where we begin to meet with folks in person. The power of the Internet has been co-opted by the massive amount of drivel out there at any given moment.

We can gather momentum, we can define and share, but, finally, we have to stand in each other’s presence and be seen by the community at large. Just as this Evolution/Revolution will grow one heart at a time, it will be recognized and valued when it manifests out here in the real world one group, one meeting, one physical manifestation at a time.

Right now we are involved in defining and organizing. Does it feel overwhelming? Oh, yes. But the key is remembering that no individual is responsible for making any of this happen. The singular responsibility is to do your part – and you do your part not “for the good of the world,” but for yourself. Because it’s the only way to understand the next step on your own path. It’s a beautiful example of appropriate selfishness. It’s a lovely paradox. The only way to truly serve yourself is to serve the world.



love,



bill 



Ethnic Cleansing – Israel vs. Palestine – History vs. Propaganda

 

 

 

Ethnic Cleansing – Israel vs. Palestine – History vs. Propaganda

 

　

What a sad but important post this is.

 

Israel – victims of the millennia. Horrors beyond reason. Birthers of a lost nation.

 

We in the west grew up on the horror and the mystery and the wonder of it.

 

We thought we knew. But we didn’t.

 

Some of us traveled a decades long, disillusioning, disheartening path, achingly disappointed in the way Israel dealt with their Palestinian co-residents. And we thought we knew.

 

 

But we didn’t.

 

Ilan Pape, an Israeli Jew wrote The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine in 2006. Few of us here in the west, especially in the United States, have heard of it. But we need to. And we need to read it.

 

Mr. Pape points out with vivid clarity and deep emotion how, just three years after the end of the Second World War - and the horror of the Holocaust - the fledgling Israeli government carried out a program of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. It's a sad book to read. The evidence Mr. Pape presents is overwhelming. Under direction from, and in complicity with the entire Israeli leadership, Israeli armed forces executed men, women, and children, and banished hundreds of thousands of resident Arabs. Mr. Pape presents verifiable evidence - complete with pictures.

 

One example –

 

　

 

                                                                    Deir Yassin

…On 9 April 1948, Jewish forces occupied the village of Deir Yassin. It lay on a hill west of Jerusalem, eight hundred metres above sea level and close to the Jewish neighbourhood of Givat Shaul.

 

The old village school serves today as a mental hospital for the western Jewish neighbourhood that expanded over the destroyed village. As they burst into the village, the Jewish soldiers sprayed the houses with machine-gun fire, killing many of the inhabitants. The remaining villagers were then gathered in one place and murdered in cold blood, their bodies abused while a number of the women were raped and then killed.6 Fahim Zaydan, who was twelve years old at the time, recalled how he saw his family murdered in front of his eyes: They took us out one after the other; shot an old man and when one of his daughters cried, she was shot too. Then they called my brother Muhammad, and shot him in front us, and when my mother yelled, bending over him – carrying my little sister Hudra in her hands, still breastfeeding her – they shot her too.7

 

Zaydan himself was shot, too, while standing in a row of children the Jewish soldiers had lined up against a wall, which they had then sprayed with bullets, ‘just for the fun of it’, before they left. He was lucky to survive his wounds. Recent research has brought down the accepted number of people massacred at Deir Yassin from 170 to ninety-three. Of course, apart from the victims of the massacre itself, dozens of others were killed in the fighting, and hence were not included in the official list of victims…

 

Pappe, Ilan (2007-09-07). The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Kindle Locations 2062-2066). Oneworld Publications (academic). Kindle Edition.

 

 

This is one example only. The book is 295 pages long. It will share with you each sordid detail.

 

The skewed historical version of the birth of the Jewish state that has been accepted by the non Arabic world is one of the great lies of the twentieth century. The fact that Mr. Pape is an Israeli Jew, not Arabic, should make it easier for folks in the west to take an unflinching look at one of the great historical lies of our time.

 

So often in both the media and in our personal interactions we find that anyone who seems to give credence to the grievances of the Arabs is accused of being anti-Semitic. "Why do the Arabs hate the Jews so?" This book can help us understand.

 

“Why do they hate us here in the west?” Maybe this book will help us understand why Arabs judge us by our allies.

 

Please understand. What is being shared here, what Mr. Pape illuminates for us, doesn’t suggest an endorsement of the excesses of Arab extremists.

 

But –

 

 

Mr. Pape suggests that peace in the Middle East is dependent on Israel taking responsibility for what they inflicted on the Palestinian people. He's right.

 

What's done can't be changed. But if both sides will take responsibility for their actions perhaps they will have the courage and compassion to approach healing in the way the South Africans did after the end of Apartheid.

 

If Quicksilver Times is to begin the long, monumentally difficult process of identifying the denial/greed based dysfunctional patterns of our social, political, economic, and spiritual institutions we have be clear about what the real history of the last century has been. Creating what is an evolutionary/revolutionary movement requires us to be clear about the point from which we start.

 

So it’s imperative that we take the blinders off, look clearly at the true state of affairs – and understand the history that has brought us to this point.

 

If we are clear about our situation then the task of designing new equitable institutions based on justice, equality, and true spiritual values, while formidable in the extreme, begins with clarity and a solid foundation.

 

It’s time to TALK ABOUT IT. Doncha’ think?


love,


bill