Married Hearts

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With the passage of time,

it's the essence, not the orientation of two hearts

which keeps them together...

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Dear Lord Jesus,
there are so many children on this planet
who need good parents.
Help us all to be mindful
of what we can do to make the lives of others
a little easier.
We never really know
where someone else came from.
Help us all to learn
about the essence of spiritual loving,
that we can bring the practice more
into our daily lives,
feeling the companionship we all desire and need. Amen.

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Human Be-In Tribal Heart

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I believe this design was originally intended to represent the "Rainbow People" of traditional American Indian mythology...

Rainbow People are people of all colors and nationalities, coming together with a unified intention to bring healing, peace and love to all living beings. Much of that idealism is coming to the fore today, with our election of President Obama and the changes American want.

Today it is more about getting involved with our world, taking personal responsibility for our actions in a time where there is no excuse for ignorance, blaming or lack of education.

But the general idea of working with diversity has to do with "Being Here Now". In the '60's, Being Here Now was a lot about withdrawing your participation from situations that did not empower you or others, and becoming more present with your "thing", the things you like to do.

The Be Here Now movement was started by a man who called himself Ram Das. Ram Das was also a friend of Timothy Leary. Timothy Leary was a pioneer in using drugs to alter his consciousness... In the same way Native American Indians did their their ancient ceremonies, the hippies of the '60's followed these models of the time.

In the '60's, the idea was all about using consciousness as a way to lift people out from their prejudices and attitudes.

From Wikipedia:

"Turn on, Tune in and Drop Out" is a counterculture phrase coined by Timothy Leary in the 1960s. The phrase came to him in the shower one day after Marshall McLuhan suggested to Leary that he come up with "something snappy" to promote the benefits of LSD. It is an excerpt from a prepared speech he delivered at the opening of a press conference in New York City on September 19, 1966. This phrase urged people to embrace cultural changes through the use of psychedelics and by detaching themselves from the existing conventions and hierarchies in society. The phrase was derided by more conservative critics.

The phrase is derived from this part of Leary's speech:

“

Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out. I mean drop out of high school, drop out of college, drop out of graduate school... [1]

”

Leary later explained in his 1983 autobiography Flashbacks:

“

'Turn on' meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. 'Tune in' meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. 'Drop' out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. 'Drop Out' meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity'.

During the era of the hippie culture, more and more people came to identify with the rainbow and it's potential symbolism of bringing diversity together. A very popular way of young adults and groups getting together was to organize gatherings for music, love-in's and Be-In's.

To attend a Be-In might be a meditation circle or a pow-wow where people are invited to bring all their energy into the moment - to "Be Here Now". Be-In's were about creating sacred space, quiet circles of energy where people could share with one another. Of course, in the '60's the counter-culture shared things like drugs, sex, rock and roll.

At meditation groups, people were invited to bring pictures of their saints, gurus, personal heroes and avatars. Children were always welcome, and people collected things to share and trade, like flowers (fresh and dried), beads, flutes, gongs, chimes, feathers, bread, wine, colorful flags, incense, crystals, etc.

These trends also all came around the time of the Stonewall Riot, when gay and lesbian groups also adopted the rainbow as their symbolic light of unity in diversity.


The Stonewall Riot came on full-fledge the night after Judy Garland's death... Judy Garland played Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz", and sang the song "Over the Rainbow". Since Judy had many gay and lesbian fans, they wanted to meet in public together to grieve her passage; however they were denied a place to gather, and their grief shortly turned into a riot at a place called Stonewall.

Please feel free to share more what you know here, or find more info about all this on the internet.

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Dear Jesus, please help me to catch on quickly
when someone is being sneaky and not even bothering
to meet me half-way.
Help me to understand and learn...
The differences between privacy, and healthy boundaries,
and outright lying.
Help me Lord, to see through these things right away.
Direct me to the kinds of human bein's I need to "be with"...
People who are present with me,
not holding back on the truth of who they are
or what I need to know,
in order that I can be whole and happy
in sharing myself with them.

Dear God, we all have needs...
Please direct me to the sorts of people
who respect themselves and also respect me.
In Jesus Name, I ask;
Amen.

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"Everybody Wants a Piece of Me" Heart; Obama Inauguration

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Obama Rides through History on Pennsylvania Avenue
Ghosts of Pennsylvania Avenue

The Washington road has been the scene of hate, oppression, possibility and progress. Obama will make the trek past dramatic civil-rights landmarks, and won't stop until he reaches the White House.


By Faye Fiore
10:47 AM PST, January 19, 2009
REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON -- When Barack Obama takes his triumphant ride along Pennsylvania Avenue Tuesday, he will retrace the path of Ku Klux Klan marches and roll past the ghosts of hotels and movie theaters that used to turn away people like him.


This historic stretch, book-ended by the Capitol on one end and the White House on the other, has witnessed many of the milestones that made an Obama presidency possible. The Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were signed here.

But it's doubtful that even a Harvard-educated wonder can get his arms around the scope of the civil-rights drama that has played out on this 1.2-mile slice of real estate.

There are places more famous for their scars -- Selma, Birmingham -- but none captures the sweep of the story the way Pennsylvania Avenue does, where laws were passed to enslave people and laws were passed to free them, and at least a dozen of Obama's predecessors would sooner have considered him a piece of property than a peer.

Nearly every president has made this ceremonial trek since Thomas Jefferson did it on horseback. But never has the setting been as connected to the nation's shame as much as its glory.

"That juxtaposition is the way I always think of Pennsylvania Avenue -- a place of great possibility and of great evil," said Lonnie Bunch, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. "It is a mirror of change in America."

Obama and his family will ride up the promenade in an armored 2009 black Cadillac limo after he takes the oath of office on Capitol steps built by slaves.

At 3rd Street, the motorcade will pass what used to be the St. Charles Hotel, a popular stop in the early 1800s where slaves were kept in underground cells while their owners enjoyed the luxuries upstairs; reimbursement was guaranteed if any escaped.

"That hotel became a favorite of black patrons after the Civil War," said Charles Cobb, an author and professor of Africana studies at Brown University.

At 4th Street, a block from the hotel that made sure no slave escaped, the new president will pass what used to be the American Colonization Society Hall, founded in 1816 to return emancipated blacks to Africa, an effort fueled in part by whites who believed there was no place in America for a free black community.

Tension between races was inborn for a democracy founded on a contradiction -- 12 of the early presidents were slave holders, eight while in the White House.

From the start, the heart of the nation's capital -- a broad avenue designed by Pierre L'Enfant that was a dusty mess until it became the town's first paved street -- was a place of mixed signals. Some freed blacks operated successful businesses while their brethren continued to be sold off in chains.

While in the White House, President Jackson kept 150 house and field slaves back on his Tennessee farm. It was under his nose one night in 1835, at 6th and Pennsylvania, that a white mob ransacked the Epicurean Eating House and tried to lynch its black owner, a man named Beverly Snow.

Today, just a few doors down, an elegant pink building with twin spires stands as a monument to the civil-rights struggle: The National Council of Negro Women headquarters, purchased with the help of Oprah Winfrey six years ago, is the only black-owned property on this famous stretch.

Inside, Dorothy Height, 96, a lifelong activist and president emeritus of the civil-rights advocacy group, keeps an office.

"No inaugurated president will leave the Capitol to go to his house without passing our house," she likes to say. Known for her trademark hats -- one day last week ti was dusty blue with a big rhinestone-studded bow -- she was preparing to attend a swearing-in ceremony she did not think she would live to see.

"Barack Obama presents a strong symbol of what we have achieved under the hardest conditions," said Height, who won a scholarship to Barnard College as a young woman but was denied admission because of her skin color.

The symbolism is even bolder considering the building is steps from 7th and Pennsylvania, where a teeming market of slaves, penned up in filth and misery awaiting sale, was a lucrative enterprise.

Obama will be halfway to the White House when he passes it. There is little to mark that it even existed. But, according to Bunch, a visiting British writer once noted that the business going on in the Capitol was drowned out by the anguished wails of families being separated and sold.

"We forget, but slavery was so embedded into the American system, it shouldn't be a surprise that slaves were traded within the shadow of the Capitol," Bunch explained.

Slavery was outlawed by 1865, but the inequality persisted. Blacks were barred from jobs, hotel rooms, toilets and restaurant counters. Pennsylvania Avenue led the nation in a dance: two steps forward and one step back.

Franklin Roosevelt opened the war-industry jobs to blacks after he was threatened with a massive march on Washington. Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal workplace to appease his offended wife.

And somewhere along this street, a sailor named Sam Harmon, stationed in Virginia during World War II, was denied admittance to a movie theater when the clerk saw the hand that reached for the ticket was black. He walked the streets that night in tears.

"As you move into the '50s and '60s, Pennsylvania Avenue is reflective of a segregated America," Cobb said. "Black people cooked in the restaurants that served the capital but couldn't eat in them."

For nearly 100 years after slavery was outlawed, Pennsylvania Avenue did little to advance justice. Then in 1964, President Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination in hotels, restaurants and department stores. Martin Luther King Jr. stood over his shoulder at the White House.

Four years later, smoke could be seen rising from Pennsylvania at 7th Street when riots broke out as word reached black neighborhoods north of downtown that King had been assassinated.

At 10th Street, Obama will pass within a block of Ford's Theater, where Lincoln was shot by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. As if in a flurry to honor his legacy, Congress would adopt the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments outlawing slavery, making former slaves citizens and giving black men the right to vote.

One result: Black businessman James Wormley opened the capital's first integrated hotel at 15th and Pennsylvania, a block from the White House.

Obama's ceremonial journey will end at the nation's most famous address -- 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. For decades, the windows offered a view of slaves servicing the elegant homes on Lafayette Square.

Today, in that same spot, record crowds will gather -- braving confounding security, epic bathroom lines and biting cold -- to watch Pennsylvania Avenue dance another step forward.

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Everybody wants a piece of me, God!
For a short time, I even get to be a "Rock Star"...
The personal is always political, Lord.
It takes tremendous courage to endure this kind of pressure from people,
but I'm good!
I'm okay!

Help me to help them Get It, God...
It's all about sharing!


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Sweet Heart / Innocent Heart

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Here it is, the traditional Sweet Heart, or Innocent Heart...

You see, you or anyone else can write whatever you want across it... (That's why you have to be careful.)

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Lord, protect all the little innocent sweet hearts out there...
Keep them from being too traumatized,
too exposed,
too vulnerable
and too cynical...
So they remember
that there are other hearts out there,
just like theirs;
and so they can find kindred spirits
and make new friends every day.

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Child's Heart

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Here is a traditional-looking heart, I feel looks like a child's. You see, this heart is protected by a circle of thorns, but hasn't been touched by them. The crucifix going down the center of the heart could represent things like baptism, vaccinations, learning a little about the holidays (such as Christmas and Easter, or what have you), and how Jesus died for us.

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Then, here is the Child's Rainbow Heart, so familiar to those of us who grew up in the '70's and beyond... With our cartoons and comics in color, our packets of skittles and starbursts and laffy-taffy; our Huggy Bears, Rainbow Brights and My Little Ponies... Yeah.

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If you want your little child to learn a little about how to respect his or her heart early on... Here is the Child's Plush Heart, available at iheartguts.com

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Finally, here is the Lego Heart for more advanced learner... Cool, huh? (I like the purple vein.)

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Dear Lord,
please help us to raise our children
in kindness and compassion,
and keep them from ignorance.
Help us to teach them early on,
regarding the poisons of the heart -
jealousy, anger, and attachment.


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