Mother, forgive us, for we do what we know not.

 

Mother, forgive us, for we do what we know not.

 **

Demeter would take the place of her grandmother, Gaia, and her mother, Rhea, as goddess of the earth in a time when humans and gods thought the activities of the heavens more sacred than those of earth.

- Leeming, David Adams, Creation Myths of the World: An Encyclopedia (Vol. 1 of 2, Bloomsbury Academic, 2010). 

 

Now the earth was corrupt in [G-]'s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.  And [G-] saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth.  Thus [G-] said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to ruin them along with the earth.  

- Genesis 6.^11-13, pericope: 6.^1-22

 

semantic network: "Nature" from Latin, natura, meaning birth or character;, 1266 is the first English recorded use as total phenomena of the world, seated between divine and human; traced also to Ancient Greece, Rhea; Earth or "Eorthe" is Old English and the Norse had myth of a goddess called Jörð (Jord, Erth); the a common ancient Hebrew form #r,a, (noun common feminine singular absolute), earth, land, pronounced eretz.  

 

Since all Homo sapiens originate from the continent known as Africa, here recommended is a short and beautiful article, Africa, the ancestral woman

 

 

An authentic Cynic search . . . Americans Who Tell the Truth, a Gallery

 

Americans Who Tell the Truth is a gallery of American Truth Tellers., a valued resource when most of the media culture is saturated with a mix-match of untruthful, confused, anxious, fearful, greedy, angry, hateful voices, caught up in all the temporal nature of the cultural-political establishment, instead of natural and moral laws, the basis for an art of life.

This fits the spirit of Diogenes of Sinope, who lit a lamp in daylight and walked through the streets of Athens with it; and when asked why, replied that he was looking for a man. Lighting a lamp in daylight was a proverbial expression for a futile exercise, thus a symbolic action which was designed to suggest that it is pointless to expect to be able to find a man in Athens. An honest man? A good one?

Yet the thought is more radical than that. “The mass of people, who accept conventional social values, not knowing what human nature is and what it means to live in accordance with nature; they are not really proper human beings at all, but anonymous members of the crowd, or slaves [21st C. ruled by, addiction to, attached to, etc.]  or scum [just plain old un-learned ignorance] to use the expressions that Diogenes applies to such people in various anecdotes.” [1]

Diogenes in His Barrel. Fragment of an oil lamp, Italy, first century CE. British Museum, London, 1814

Here are a few of the honest Americans in the gallery of whom I have read and followed.  Take time to visit this site. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Pastor, American prophet, Civil Rights Leader

Ralph Nader, American lawyer and political activist involved in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. He is a perennial presidential candidate.

 

James Baldwin, American writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems.

 Wendell Berry, American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer.

John Robert Lewis, American civil rights activist and politician who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020.

Chris Hedges, an American journalist, author, commentator and Presbyterian minister.

William J. Barber II, American Protestant minister, social activist, professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and founding director of the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy at Yale Divinity School; president and senior lecturer at Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival. 

---

[1] DIOGENES THE CYNIC: Sayings and Anecdotes with Other Popular Moralists. Translated, Introduction and Notes, Robin Hard, Oxford Univ. Press, 2017, ix

 

How are you being scripted living in empire? A call for zeal . . .

 What’s your script?

 Everybody lives by a script—whether implicit or explicit.  We get scripted through the process of nurture, formation and socialization, and it happens without our knowing it.  The dominant script in our society is one of technological therapeutic military consumerism.  It is a script enacted through advertising, propaganda and ideology, especially in the liturgies of television, promises to keep us safe and happy. That script has failed. The script of technological therapeutic military consumerism cannot make us safe or happy.

The work forward is dynamics of hope for a habitable planet, just and equitable wealth/resources, and peace sustained by a counter-script that follows a spiritual/psychic re-birth, what is spoken and opined for hundreds of years—to denounce the dominant script.

 Enlightened forms of counter script are nurtured, formed and socialized by work of those devoted to work out skillful means, practices, collaborations, community/group/disciplined work* affording relinquishment of the dominant script and embracing of a counter-script, which is crucial, pivotal and indispensable in society precisely because there is no one to challenge the dominant script and present the counter-script other than those engaged in this vital work that offers a dynamic hope for the planet, species, and peace of a third kind.

*E.g., Socratic dialogos and dialectic, Jesus’ sayings (writings) [not modern Christianity per se], Buddhist Dharma, philosophical traditions with perennial and returning reductions ever honing the human niche in a complex universe.

Image: Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan

Counter Script, See Walter Brueggemann, Counterscript: Living with the elusive God, The Christian Century

[America’s] consumption ignores the need [Poor]; [hence] the Goods

Qoheleth 9.^{11-12, 16-18}

 

I turned to observe                

under the sun

that not to the swift              

the race

nor to the wise mind             

bread

discerning                              

favor

for time and chance             

encounter them all

 

I said good [is] intelligence

over valor,

yet wisdom of the poor  

is despised

[their] voice

unheeded. . .

 

[thus]

Sayings of the wise

in quietness

being heard over

the clamor

of one reigning

in stupidity—

 

A better intelligence

than implements of hostility

 missing in error

causing destruction

of a good many.

 

 To capture the commendation of possibility in the pericope, read 9.12-15; translation, July 2025

 

 **

 

Blessed the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Kata Maqqaion 5.³ (pericope: 5.^1-12, to be read within literary portion, “sermon on mount”)

 **

Additional reading

 

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

- Jame Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (1961), “Fifth Avenue, Uptown: a letter from Harlem”

 

 

 

A commentary and illustration of US collective impact in a seriously harmful way neglecting the “all” and “we” of a spirit of America in an age-old promise of prosperity [via consumption].

 

 

**

 

Under the SPM, the number of people in poverty increased from 40.9 million in 2022 to 42.8 million in 2023.   Poverty in the United States in 2023 | Congress.gov | Library of Congress

Singapore PM’s Reality Check to Trump Amid Tariff War In Parliament, Apr. 7, 2025

 

. . . quietly sharing this both as informative and as comparison to the intellectual buffoon in the WH—a spectacle of an anti-intellectual force in the electorate—the dumbing and numbing of divided state of America in technopoly via widespread use and addiction to dark arts with social medium  

Full: Singapore PM’s Reality Check To Trump Amid Tariff War In Parliament: ‘Just The Beginning Of…’

Lawrence Wong, 4th Prime Minister of Singapore, 4/07/2025

new year taking shape

 

Walt Witman 

numb

new form shifts spirit

in recognition of her 

eschatological voice 

like gods to consolation—

"we few, we happy few”

overlook anywhere misfortune

meets home

 

sgc, 2025

 

An early reflection on the impact of social media on our civic process and the 'numbing-down' of the American collective psyche.