photo courtesy of Google.
On the Genius of the Occupation
I am spending most of my time these days on a book and haven't written for OEN or Words, UnLtd. in a month.
Were I more active, I'd study the form and idea of "occupation" and what it means for the millennium, and I hope not just this decade. I hope that it has usurped 9/11 and the advent of the tyranny of fear and the Tea Party and offered an answer, not a shivering question.
As the ideal spreads from physical encampments to materialization of what they imply--as if the one percent didn't know what we wanted, as they profess they don't---I knew we could transcend it when they began to kick us out. I knew that the real encampment is within the system, not outside it, like an invasion, but an occupation of what is ours, from our souls to foreclosed-on homes, an act of genius that will be reenacted in other domains as we clarify what we want.
Let us occupy their consciences, their churches. Let us ask them what they want or profess to want by visiting them once a week. Jesus demands that we walk in his footsteps, proclaims that we can sooner thread a camel through a needle's eye than see a wealthy man in heaven. Do they question this as they mouth these words of wisdom each week? Do they think or just grab?
What does that parable mean? Why a camel? It's Sunday after all and "Judaism has been occupied," at least for a few hours, here in DC--what an unfortunate way to alienate people like me from attending what may have been a significant event, to name it "Occupy Judaism."
So let's go to Jesus Christ. Why of all things a camel? Those in North Africa dying of the drought have lost their humps, but Jesus implies a well-fed camel, doesn't he? It's a passing reference.
A camel stores nutrition (water?) in its hump to be able to survive long treks through the desert. To shrink it down to thread may be theoretically possible(?) but it implies first of all shrinking its hump, its life savings, as it were, to nothing. I can read into this what the one percent are doing to the rest of this country and the world--trying to thread us through the eye of a needle, utter demolition.
Is that all? Are we the wealthy ones? Are we not simply demanding our share of things rather than craving yachts, fifty different homes all over the world, fancy cars? Are we now not turning to our resources and resourcefulness to triumph and shrink them down to the nothingness that their greed represents?
What of the needle? Shall we mend our clothing with them, force them to buttress our necessities the way we have enabled their ascent and ids turned full-force against civilization and everything it implies?
Have I occupied Christianity or merely the warped mentalities of those who profess the religion but have strayed so far from the teachings they claim to affirm once a week? We must be choosy about occupations, which are crucial to our survival as the Revolution. Jews died with Christians, white and black, to achieve the birth of civil rights in the mid-twentieth century.
"And the first one now will later be last," to jump from Jesus to a twentieth-century genius who blessed us with this song of hope as we began a process our children are taking up and continuing.
I read the newspapers when I can and find things even there that I'd given up on between 2000 and 2008, the Bush 43 regime. There was no such thing as good news back then. Today the good news is that a new Russian Revolution seems to be rising. Among all those standing up against repressive regimes, I have to say that I find the Saudi Arabians the bravest among these super-brave souls willingly going up against weapons of death to win back our souls and autonomy--though what we want may differ, it's what we want that we are daring to fight for above ground now.
To paraphrase Ben Franklin and draw strength from what our founding fathers contributed to the world, "Its a revolution, if we can keep it."
Hard rains are a'fallin'. And even Warren Buffett can't control the weather. We shall define piece by piece, enact physically what we want and began to express from those coast-to-coast encampments. Evidently they need a house to fall on them, and it will be their mansions.
( c )
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