Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Second Coming, in the Hope of Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon finally heard the falconer;
Things fell together; the centre always held;
Mere love is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide has receded, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is reborn;
The best recall their conviction, while the worst
have forgotten their passionate intensity.
Every day another revelation is at hand;
Surely every Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Propels my sight: somewhere in the depths of each heart
A shape with angel body and the face of a human,
Its gaze warm and enlivening as the sun,
Is stirring its charges awake, while all about it
Reel starlight forms of the friends of the Earth.
The darkness drops again; and now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were carried in slumber by a rocking cradle,
And what glorious being, its hour come round at last,
Rises in you to be born?
The falcon finally heard the falconer;
Things fell together; the centre always held;
Mere love is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide has receded, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is reborn;
The best recall their conviction, while the worst
have forgotten their passionate intensity.
Every day another revelation is at hand;
Surely every Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Propels my sight: somewhere in the depths of each heart
A shape with angel body and the face of a human,
Its gaze warm and enlivening as the sun,
Is stirring its charges awake, while all about it
Reel starlight forms of the friends of the Earth.
The darkness drops again; and now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were carried in slumber by a rocking cradle,
And what glorious being, its hour come round at last,
Rises in you to be born?
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
on action and regret
Everyone will realize their mistakes, sooner or later, and fix their behavior going forward. The forward direction is important because it can be its own mistake to make amends to the past and the people you met, since they are no longer where you left them. What counts is the future and the people you will meet, because that's where the universe awaits. So the question that remains is how quickly each turnabout comes. Will the realization to correct take minutes, hours, days, months, years, lifetimes? Is the awareness coming faster or slower each time? The more you stretch it out, the more risk of dangerous reaction from others as your own outward behavior worsens. The realistic goal is not to make all regrettable impulse disappear, but to increasingly arrive at regret before taking irreversible action. The wise one will reconsider within, to offer up their best to the outer world in the time allowed. There's no shame in closing the cycles of intolerance to acceptance privately, that's what the inner world is for. How much better to address the hateful thought today than the hateful action tomorrow. But if that is not possible, at least to have left the hateful thought to tomorrow rather than become committed to the hateful deed today.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
encouragements to not act badly
The universe works for you. Only you are reacting to it as if it does not, making assumptions it will oppose you, preemptively controlling and forcing and breaking things, and generally not giving things a chance to work out.
What complicates things immensely is the fact that so many other people are acting like you too. They do act against you, they're teaching and perpetuating bad examples, which you learn and generalize from. It would be much clearer that the universe was acting for you if (A) other people didn't act badly, and (B) you stopped opposing and gave things a chance to work out.
Of course it would be easier if you could get A without B, you'd be the king of the universe! But your self-esteem would plummet. You'd become extremely alienated without any sense of how you, the only bad one, could reform, which way to go, or why you even deserve to exist. You need other people showing you various examples of bad behavior, sometimes worse than your behavior sometimes better, so you can learn and relate. You need to see that badly acting people are still human beings that you can understand and care about. Otherwise you'd be totally lost, forever!
It is worth noting that you do flirt with experiences of A without B. You can get pockets of people being good around you while you're the only one doing something bad. Those are intense moments indeed, when you have the choice to be defensive and blaming (I'm not bad, they did something wrong, those good two-shoes!) or you can be inspired and grateful, letting them show you how to forgive and fix your actions. Make the most of such opportunities, they are life-changing.
And what if you get B without A, that is, badly acting people around you when you're being good? Is that possible, is that even fair? Well chalk it up to the momentum of your reality, because you certainly can get badly behaving people coming in and out of your life even after you clean up your act. Learn a lesson, watch your secondary reactions, make the best of it! Reinforce your commitment to not do what they're doing, take the opportunity to clarify your understanding of the situation, and refine yourself further. They may or may not learn from and appreciate you, but you can certainly learn from and appreciate yourself. It's simply going to take a while for all the problems to fade away, and much longer if you go in and out of bad behavior too.
The point is that badly acting people will have no sticking power if you are working positively with the universe. How? Because the universe will take the badly acting people into account when providing for you, and your job is simply to not hold onto them or react badly back.
If someone doesn't want to change, don't try to change them, that would be a form of holding onto. Offer but don't force, care but care enough to let live. Everything doesn't need to be perfect for your life to be fine, everyone will need some space to play out their own choices. The universe is going to make room for everyone to experience life as they choose, so the newspapers will still be full of all kinds of stories.
That is why your planet will definitely not become perfect in your lifetime, and your response to difficult situations will matter. But your life can defintely become a resilient moving bubble of perfection in the world, mysteriously untouchable to those who would shake you, and heaven sent to those who are looking for examples in the new way to be.
What complicates things immensely is the fact that so many other people are acting like you too. They do act against you, they're teaching and perpetuating bad examples, which you learn and generalize from. It would be much clearer that the universe was acting for you if (A) other people didn't act badly, and (B) you stopped opposing and gave things a chance to work out.
Of course it would be easier if you could get A without B, you'd be the king of the universe! But your self-esteem would plummet. You'd become extremely alienated without any sense of how you, the only bad one, could reform, which way to go, or why you even deserve to exist. You need other people showing you various examples of bad behavior, sometimes worse than your behavior sometimes better, so you can learn and relate. You need to see that badly acting people are still human beings that you can understand and care about. Otherwise you'd be totally lost, forever!
It is worth noting that you do flirt with experiences of A without B. You can get pockets of people being good around you while you're the only one doing something bad. Those are intense moments indeed, when you have the choice to be defensive and blaming (I'm not bad, they did something wrong, those good two-shoes!) or you can be inspired and grateful, letting them show you how to forgive and fix your actions. Make the most of such opportunities, they are life-changing.
And what if you get B without A, that is, badly acting people around you when you're being good? Is that possible, is that even fair? Well chalk it up to the momentum of your reality, because you certainly can get badly behaving people coming in and out of your life even after you clean up your act. Learn a lesson, watch your secondary reactions, make the best of it! Reinforce your commitment to not do what they're doing, take the opportunity to clarify your understanding of the situation, and refine yourself further. They may or may not learn from and appreciate you, but you can certainly learn from and appreciate yourself. It's simply going to take a while for all the problems to fade away, and much longer if you go in and out of bad behavior too.
The point is that badly acting people will have no sticking power if you are working positively with the universe. How? Because the universe will take the badly acting people into account when providing for you, and your job is simply to not hold onto them or react badly back.
If someone doesn't want to change, don't try to change them, that would be a form of holding onto. Offer but don't force, care but care enough to let live. Everything doesn't need to be perfect for your life to be fine, everyone will need some space to play out their own choices. The universe is going to make room for everyone to experience life as they choose, so the newspapers will still be full of all kinds of stories.
That is why your planet will definitely not become perfect in your lifetime, and your response to difficult situations will matter. But your life can defintely become a resilient moving bubble of perfection in the world, mysteriously untouchable to those who would shake you, and heaven sent to those who are looking for examples in the new way to be.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
sentiments for the new year
Pursue the positive experience of being into yourself. If you don't, who will? Just try to get to know all your human's thoughts and feelings. Consider what you have to do and what you want to do. Give every situation a chance to work out to offer something for everyone including you. Patiently wait for opportunities to explore your interests. Make time on a regular basis to do something expressive or creative with yourself. Hang out with yourself in various moods. Evaluate your impulses and list your options, find the most interesting things to do, including some out of the ordinary. Collect the things you do and make, and enjoy going over them like you're sharing them with a friend. You will be. How can it ever be a bad thing to be into yourself, if inside you is your access to God, the greatest energy of love and wisdom that in turn connects with and cares for everyone and everything in harmony. Ideally, people should be leading fairly balanced and judicious lives, kind to themselves and everyone around them, because they're far too busy getting to know themselves to ever waste time on unecessary conflicts and disasters. Do your part to contribute your best functioning self to the world which needs it, so that more and more people will feel the pull to just know what to do when the time comes to fix the problems and celebrate being alive together.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
"Wal-Mart fired my husband for being sick."
I hear good and bad things about Walmart these days, but this one really sucks if true.
http://www.demeritwalmart.com
So I did an about face and wrote the following to the preceding URL:
If you don't serve humanity then I will shop at a store that's better for my nation and my world. People get sick, you have the power to take care of them. I hear that Target is good for employees and communities, I will do my next shopping there instead. -- Carl Schroeder
----- Original Message -----
From: Katie, MomsRising.org
To: carl@swedenborgchapel.org
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009 6:07 PM
Subject: Wal-Mart fired my husband for being sick.
"My husband just got fired" -- for demerits resulting from taking needed sick days.
Give Wal-Mart a Demerit of its own today!
Take Action
Dear Carl,
This holiday season, millions of Wal-Mart employees are living in fear of getting demerits, losing pay, or being fired simply because they take sick days [1]. It happened to this family:
"My husband just got fired for missing sick days. He missed 5 1/2 days in 6 months." This MomsRising member reports that these were days when her husband had legitimate doctor's notes or when her husband's manager sent him home because of flu symptoms. He received "demerits" when he took this needed sick time, and "The day after Black Friday… they called him in and fired him for missing too many days in 6 months. He did not take off 'weekends, sunny days, or go fishing'…he was sick. This is just wrong."
Wal-Mart's policy is not just unhealthy and unfair for employees, it also could harm customers and the general public. With about 1.4 million employees in the U.S. [2] -- that's a lot of people who could be coming to work sick, and unwittingly exposing their coworkers and customers to contagious diseases such as the flu--putting us all at risk.
Together, we can take on this mega corporation and help millions of families stay healthy and keep needed jobs. It's Wal-Mart the company, not it's employees, that really deserves the demerits - for their unhealthy and unfair policy that's bad for employees and customers.
Give Wal-Mart a Demerit Badge of its own today by clicking here: www.demeritwalmart.com
With your demerit badge, you'll be telling Wal-Mart to stop punishing employees for taking sick days.
Now's the time to take action!
This week is the last full week of holiday shopping before Christmas. That means now, more than ever, Wal-Mart wants nothing but good press to drive shoppers to their stores. By sending your demerit badge today, and sharing this message with your friends by forwarding this email now, we can make sure Wal-Mart gets the message at a time when they can't ignore it.
Help us reach our goal! We're so close that your action now can take us over the top. Our goal is to send 40,000 Demerit Badges to Wal-Mart. We're up to 35,000. Help millions of families and safeguard the public's health by sending your Demerit Badge today. Together we can gather enough Demerit Badges to earn media coverage to shame Wal-Mart into changing its policies.
Why is Wal-Mart's sick days policy important for all of us?
* Wal-Mart's sick days policy is bad for women and families. Women comprise 72 percent of Wal-Mart's workforce [3]. As Gloria Steinem said earlier this year: "The fact is that women need [access to paid sick days] more than anyone else. Women still have so much more family responsibility than men…" [4] The increased responsibilities for caregiving that women carry mean that women are more likely to be at risk for punishment and termination under bad policies.
* Wal-Mart's sick days policy has public health implications for us all. Wal-Mart employs about 1.4 million people in the U.S. [5] - that's a lot of people who come to work sick, and expose their coworkers and customers to potential illness.
* When Wal-Mart changes its policies, other companies take notice. Wal-Mart is one of the largest private employers in the country [6]. Therefore Wal-Mart frequently sets the standard (or at least the floor) for many of the policies that other companies put in place. We've heard from dozens of MomsRising members who say that the company they work for has sick days policies which are similar to the policies at Wal-Mart. By focusing our efforts on Wal-Mart now, we can set an example for other companies and propel them to change their practices as well.
What does Wal-Mart have to say for itself?
MomsRising and the New York Times exposed Wal-Mart's sick leave policies in early November of this year [6]. Soon after, the company commented with ABC News reporting that Wal-Mart will be issuing a memo to "to human resource managers at stores across the country saying, 'We must be clear that no one will lose their job if they get H1N1.'" [7] This answer is full of more spin than a spider convention.
It sounds like Wal-Mart answered, but if you think about it, this answer doesn't address the problem at all. First of all, in most cases when people have flu symptoms, doctors aren't doing lab tests to check for the H1N1 virus, so there's no way for Wal-Mart to know if an employee has H1N1, the seasonal flu, or any other illness. Second, Wal-Mart didn't address whether sick employees would continue to receive demerits, as is their usual practice. And third, our colleagues at the National Labor Committee have spoken to workers at several Wal-Mart stores who all say they haven't been told of any changes to Wal-Mart's sick days policy. [8]
In the past two weeks, MomsRising has asked Wal-Mart to clarify their sick days policy, but so far we've received no response.
Give Wal-Mart a demerit badge today - in the height of the shopping season - and tell them to stop punishing employees for taking sick days. www.demeritwalmart.com
Nobody wants to shop at Wal-Mart and end up bringing home more than just a bag of presents. And nobody wants to live in fear of losing their job simply because they caught the flu.
Thank you,
--Katie, Mary, Kristin, Joan, Julia, Anita, and the MomsRising.org Team
P.S. MomsRising and our partners insist that no retaliation be taken by Wal-Mart management against any worker who speaks the truth about Wal-Mart's punitive sick leave policies. We will be watching this very closely.
1. The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/03sick.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper
2. http://WalMartstores.com/FactsNews/FactSheets/
3. http://Walmartwatch.com/pages/women_be_wary
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvvvAdSD3sM
5. http://WalMartstores.com/FactsNews/FactSheets/ (Employment and Diversity Fact Sheet)
6. The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/03sick.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper
7. ABC News: http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=686 and http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/Wal-Mart-defends-sick-leave-policy-good-morning-america/story?id=9013693
Also see:
- ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/SwineFluNews/walmart-sick-policy-irks/story?id=8999558
- Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/08/AR2009110818009.html?sub=AR
8. http://www.nlcnet.org/
http://www.demeritwalmart.com
So I did an about face and wrote the following to the preceding URL:
If you don't serve humanity then I will shop at a store that's better for my nation and my world. People get sick, you have the power to take care of them. I hear that Target is good for employees and communities, I will do my next shopping there instead. -- Carl Schroeder
----- Original Message -----
From: Katie, MomsRising.org
To: carl@swedenborgchapel.org
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009 6:07 PM
Subject: Wal-Mart fired my husband for being sick.
"My husband just got fired" -- for demerits resulting from taking needed sick days.
Give Wal-Mart a Demerit of its own today!
Take Action
Dear Carl,
This holiday season, millions of Wal-Mart employees are living in fear of getting demerits, losing pay, or being fired simply because they take sick days [1]. It happened to this family:
"My husband just got fired for missing sick days. He missed 5 1/2 days in 6 months." This MomsRising member reports that these were days when her husband had legitimate doctor's notes or when her husband's manager sent him home because of flu symptoms. He received "demerits" when he took this needed sick time, and "The day after Black Friday… they called him in and fired him for missing too many days in 6 months. He did not take off 'weekends, sunny days, or go fishing'…he was sick. This is just wrong."
Wal-Mart's policy is not just unhealthy and unfair for employees, it also could harm customers and the general public. With about 1.4 million employees in the U.S. [2] -- that's a lot of people who could be coming to work sick, and unwittingly exposing their coworkers and customers to contagious diseases such as the flu--putting us all at risk.
Together, we can take on this mega corporation and help millions of families stay healthy and keep needed jobs. It's Wal-Mart the company, not it's employees, that really deserves the demerits - for their unhealthy and unfair policy that's bad for employees and customers.
Give Wal-Mart a Demerit Badge of its own today by clicking here: www.demeritwalmart.com
With your demerit badge, you'll be telling Wal-Mart to stop punishing employees for taking sick days.
Now's the time to take action!
This week is the last full week of holiday shopping before Christmas. That means now, more than ever, Wal-Mart wants nothing but good press to drive shoppers to their stores. By sending your demerit badge today, and sharing this message with your friends by forwarding this email now, we can make sure Wal-Mart gets the message at a time when they can't ignore it.
Help us reach our goal! We're so close that your action now can take us over the top. Our goal is to send 40,000 Demerit Badges to Wal-Mart. We're up to 35,000. Help millions of families and safeguard the public's health by sending your Demerit Badge today. Together we can gather enough Demerit Badges to earn media coverage to shame Wal-Mart into changing its policies.
Why is Wal-Mart's sick days policy important for all of us?
* Wal-Mart's sick days policy is bad for women and families. Women comprise 72 percent of Wal-Mart's workforce [3]. As Gloria Steinem said earlier this year: "The fact is that women need [access to paid sick days] more than anyone else. Women still have so much more family responsibility than men…" [4] The increased responsibilities for caregiving that women carry mean that women are more likely to be at risk for punishment and termination under bad policies.
* Wal-Mart's sick days policy has public health implications for us all. Wal-Mart employs about 1.4 million people in the U.S. [5] - that's a lot of people who come to work sick, and expose their coworkers and customers to potential illness.
* When Wal-Mart changes its policies, other companies take notice. Wal-Mart is one of the largest private employers in the country [6]. Therefore Wal-Mart frequently sets the standard (or at least the floor) for many of the policies that other companies put in place. We've heard from dozens of MomsRising members who say that the company they work for has sick days policies which are similar to the policies at Wal-Mart. By focusing our efforts on Wal-Mart now, we can set an example for other companies and propel them to change their practices as well.
What does Wal-Mart have to say for itself?
MomsRising and the New York Times exposed Wal-Mart's sick leave policies in early November of this year [6]. Soon after, the company commented with ABC News reporting that Wal-Mart will be issuing a memo to "to human resource managers at stores across the country saying, 'We must be clear that no one will lose their job if they get H1N1.'" [7] This answer is full of more spin than a spider convention.
It sounds like Wal-Mart answered, but if you think about it, this answer doesn't address the problem at all. First of all, in most cases when people have flu symptoms, doctors aren't doing lab tests to check for the H1N1 virus, so there's no way for Wal-Mart to know if an employee has H1N1, the seasonal flu, or any other illness. Second, Wal-Mart didn't address whether sick employees would continue to receive demerits, as is their usual practice. And third, our colleagues at the National Labor Committee have spoken to workers at several Wal-Mart stores who all say they haven't been told of any changes to Wal-Mart's sick days policy. [8]
In the past two weeks, MomsRising has asked Wal-Mart to clarify their sick days policy, but so far we've received no response.
Give Wal-Mart a demerit badge today - in the height of the shopping season - and tell them to stop punishing employees for taking sick days. www.demeritwalmart.com
Nobody wants to shop at Wal-Mart and end up bringing home more than just a bag of presents. And nobody wants to live in fear of losing their job simply because they caught the flu.
Thank you,
--Katie, Mary, Kristin, Joan, Julia, Anita, and the MomsRising.org Team
P.S. MomsRising and our partners insist that no retaliation be taken by Wal-Mart management against any worker who speaks the truth about Wal-Mart's punitive sick leave policies. We will be watching this very closely.
1. The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/03sick.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper
2. http://WalMartstores.com/FactsNews/FactSheets/
3. http://Walmartwatch.com/pages/women_be_wary
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvvvAdSD3sM
5. http://WalMartstores.com/FactsNews/FactSheets/ (Employment and Diversity Fact Sheet)
6. The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/03sick.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper
7. ABC News: http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=686 and http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/Wal-Mart-defends-sick-leave-policy-good-morning-america/story?id=9013693
Also see:
- ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/SwineFluNews/walmart-sick-policy-irks/story?id=8999558
- Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/08/AR2009110818009.html?sub=AR
8. http://www.nlcnet.org/
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Blessings of the New Software
I must report that my life is being transformed by software. The Journal 5 is totally amazing, I am inputing all my dreams and ideas and journals and relevant emails and snippets of research into searchable hyperlinked calendar-sorted topic-tagged pages in this great personal information management system. This goes way beyond helping me to write my book, this is giving me mastery of my inner world in all the forms that I write it. I can also embed images, and link to sites and audio files. I'm currently making a personal dream and life taxonomy to tag my notes. I didn't know journaling software like this existed, I hear that many writers use it to organize their material, and professional bloggers use this, it has blog uploading features. You could write a whole book on this and then just transfer the final chapters to a full word processer. See http://www.davidrm.com/ or google journaling software for others, some have other features like timeline for memoir writers at http://www.lifejournal.com. For anyone who wants to work on just dreams, you can get more dream oriented features including symbol dictionaries and interpretation systems from http://www.dreamanswers.com or Alchera from http://www.mythwell.com
peace,
Carl
peace,
Carl
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
note to self: become transtemporal
That’s the only way I can collaborate with myself across time and all the phases of my life that work together. I look back on great chapters and works and memories. I can feel sad that I can’t do it now, but then I can’t do then what I’m doing now. I have to be all of me in symphony, discovering how well it all fits together: the intuitively sincerely lived past supporting the honest service-oriented present looking for the opportunities to the best futures that answer my hopes and dreams.
