Meditations in the labyrinth

I walked into the labyrinth to do a healing meditation this morning.    I was sending healing and alleviation of pain to several people while I was in the center of the labyrinth. After I was finished with that I started walking around the gardens.  I don’t know if I can remember everything that whirled through my mind as I was doing that, but there was plenty of it.  It is no wonder that I feel tired.

The first train of thought arose because I had just been in the labyrinth which I have dedicated to peace and healing.  Naturally, I was thinking about peace in the world, which of course led immediately to thoughts of how America is not contributing to that peace.   

There was a short detour into concern about my son, who has a badly sprained ankle and is scheduled to deploy to the war zone in the Middle East within days, coupled with anger and disgust that an x-ray that was taken of that ankle two days ago will not be read by a competent radiologist until tomorrow.  

I wrenched myself away from this side track with great difficulty, and started thinking about world peace again.   It wasn’t that long before I was enticed into a mental diatribe directed at our sitting “President” Mr. George W. Bush.   Of course this rant was tainted by my previous detour and heightened by despair that arose from my healing meditation, which was about alleviating pain.  

How ironic that the President of the United States advocates the inflicting of pain on human beings simply because he thinks they might be the enemy.  He’s not sure, but they must be guilty of something since they got rounded up, right?   I can’t even conceive of a mind as evil as his must be to be able to rationalize his position on torture at the same time as denying that providing health care to children is a worthy cause.   We can spend billions of dollars bombing Iraq, using ammunition that is coated with depleted uranium so we can sicken the population of that country (and our soldiers too) for generations to come.   But fund health care for children here?   Or feed the hungry?   Or house the indigent?   Anathema!

I am resisting getting started on the degradation of the environment and climate that this insane criminal has presided over.

I started composing a letter to the president as I was walking about the place.   I realized quite soon during its mental composition that I could not send it without risking being investigated by his minions, perhaps even being harrassed.   Judging by the deep silence I hear from all sides at the same time that his approval ratings are so low, I am not the only person so afraid.   That made me even more angry, because I have allowed myself to be intimidated by the threat of having my phone calls listened to and my internet monitored.

Then I thought, what am I afraid of?   I am guilty of nothing except an extreme outrage that is so complex I don’t even know if I can express it.  The letter goes something like this:

Dear President Mr. Bush:

How dare you stand up in front of a bank of microphones and claim that you speak for all Americans!  

You are an unmitigatedly evil person.   I don’t think that you can claim the title of human being, much less American. 

I am an American, and the only thing that we as a citizenry have failed to do, largely because our elected representatives both in the Congress and the Senate are craven cowards, is to IMPEACH you for your rampant and unrepentant trampling of the Constitution of the United States, which, incidentally, you swore to “uphold, defend and protect” not once, but twice, with your bloodstained hand resting securely upon the Holy Bible.  

Oh, here the temptation to get into your total and complete hypocrisy regarding that book and your professed belief in and adherence to it becomes almost insuperable.   You can advocate torture, you can happily condemn children of this country to no health care, you can call aid to the poor entitlement programs, you can tax the middle class to death while exempting your buddies from any tax burden whatsoever, and you call yourself a Christian?

I used to believe in God, but I don’t any more, because I am absolutely positive that if there was a God, any person as evil and corrupt as you are would never have lived to become the leader of a country in such a position of power as you hold without being struck down by lightning, earthquake, fire, volcanic eruption, or the death dealing sword of some archangel.   If you choose to read this as a death threat, than so be it.   Except, you see, as a healer and a person truly dedicated to trying to promote peace, I could never actually kill you, no matter how much I believed you deserved it.

I just wanted to write you and let you know why I despise you so much.   You see, I come from a long line of citizens of this country.   One of  my ancestors landed here on the Mayflower.   Another couple of ancestors landed farther south, in the New Haarlem area of the continent, and actually signed the treaty that wrested control of Manhattan and Long Island out of the hands of the indigenous people who lived there.   I realize that some of my ancestral hands were bloodstained.  

One branch of my family married into the Mohawk tribe, so I have both the oppressors and the oppressed in my blood line.   It is quite likely that one of the southern branches of my family was a family of freed slaves that were passing for white in the small Alabama farm town they appeared in.   No one knows for sure, but I have been tempted to have DNA testing done to find out.  That would ally me with another group we oppressed, whose labors built the very economy you are quietly destroying with trade agreements and national debt. 

I come from stock who lived off the land.   I come from people who left an entire continent and a culture equipped with many comforts to settle in a place where they had only their health and hands and heads to entice a living out of the cold and rocky soils where they landed.   Many of their compatriots didn’t survive the starvation and disease of their first winters here.   But my ancestors persevered in the face of difficulties because they wanted to live somewhere where the government could not dictate to them their moral values or their religious practice.

I come from people who first help explore and then migrated into the western wilderness, with nothing but their hands, heads, hearts, and health, and a few tools.   I come from people who had courage, who put their lives on the line to make a living from the soil where they put their roots, without possibility of help from any other person.

My ancestresses demonstrated for the cause of women’s suffrage.   One of them even spent time in jail for her participation in a demonstration.  

And you want me to be afraid of a few bomb-wielding religious fanatics?   You want me to give up the liberty and rights for which my ancestors fought to the death with England, just so that you can conveniently spy on a few people who you think “might” be planning to attack us?   You think your interpretation of the scripture should be the law for all people not only here but also abroad, in direct oppostion to the Constitutionally mandated separation of Church and State, so you deny pre-natal care and contraception to them?

Fuck you, Mr. Bush, only I wouldn’t give you that pleasure.   Let the enemy come.   The price of liberty is sometimes death, a truth that your cowardly heart could never understand.  Thomas Jefferson said:

The roots of the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of Patriots.

You, Mr. Bush, understand neither liberty, patriotism, nor humanity.   All that motivates you is pride, greed, and covetousness.   How ironic that these are labeled as grevious sins by the very Book you swore your oath on.   How obvious from your breaking of that Oath that you don’t believe in that book for one instance, or the God it supposedly praises.   Your God is Mammon, Mr. Bush.

I stand confused and enraged by your continued existence in the world.  You may carry the title, but you are not my president.

Sincerely, oh so very sincerely,

Healingmagichands