Without Borders

By Michael Hall

Our compassion and sensitivity for each other should not be limited by boudaries or contained within illusionary boundaries or borders. My allegiance is to the word of God, the love of life and to the message. My loyalites are to truth,altruism,non-violence, mercy,justice, and the protection of the weak, the feeding of the hungry, the freeing of the imprisoned, the respect for those whose language i cannot speak, the culture different yet equal to mine,the understanding that we are all on the same level and these truths are sheparding me in quiet gentleness on the golden pathway which is paved in humility,servitude and universal love for one and all. This is the premise of my book: "Without Broders". This is done in free-verse poetry and prose essays. I hope you enjoy it. Namaste

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 24, 2008
• ISBN: 9781465317667

Michael Hall

Michael Hall grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and lives with his family in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is the creator of numerous acclaimed picture books for children, including Frankencrayon, Red: A Crayon’s Story, My Heart Is Like a Zoo, Perfect Square, and It’s an Orange Aardvark! 

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Copyright © 2008 by Michael Hall.

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Contents

Preface

Dedication

Introduction

Wake up the White Rose

The church manifesto

The green party letter

Civil Disobedience is Patriotic

Pragmatism in Politics . . . Indeed

The sister Letter

Rocket science and the practicality of a message

Teaching the Young

To Sami Al-Arian

Illegal Immigration . . . A Matter of Perspective

‘Dismayed at the Audacity

I spy on you, you spy on me, we spy for freedom, horary!

1984 Alive and Well in 2007

The Emperor Has No Clothes

Time to Impeach While We Still Can

Wave that Flag America, It’s the Fourth of July

Direct Support Professional’s are not Sacrificial Lambs

Axioms

Epilogue

Preface

a.tif

We must learn to live in peace

Or we will die in war

choose well

b.tif

The holy land belongs to everyone equally,

under the eyes and love of the God of us all

Dedication

This book is dedicated with deep humility to the weak, the needy, the disadvantaged, the poor, the homeless, the have not’s, the downtrodden, the occupied, the tortured, the imprisoned, the oppressed, the underdog, to the peacemakers, to the humble, to the merciful, to those people who have awakened to the awareness of enlightenment which is; what is here is not ours, what we are is what good we do for others, and what we give makes us who we shall be. Namaste.

Introduction

If we are to continue here on this planet successfully, we must learn and teach what we all should already know. We are generally good people, just immature, wet behind the ears, and sometimes misguided who occasionally seem to have a self-defeating habit of straying off course in our pathway to God. This deviation is invariably caused by selfishness, self-indulgence, materialism, pride, greed, and the acceptance of a pyramidal system where the have’s suppress, abuse, milk, and manipulate the have not’s. This ‘King of the Hill’ format that we all virtually slave under is a societal format that needs to be set aside like the children’s game that it is, replaced by a method and attitude that is based upon compassion, altruism, stewardship, and responsibility to our world and fellow human beings. We need to grow up and learn to take care of what really isn’t ours to possess, our task is to take care of this place for the sake of the future, which is what we should be striving to protect and hand off not as a massive debt that we have incurred and refuse to pay for, but to pass this off without our debt as a shackle and chain to the very relations that we say we care and love the most; our children. The nest that we deliver to our offspring should not be fouled. This myopic, self-indulgence of addictive appetite for everything that we can get our hands on in a pursuit of wanton hedonism like some mindless horde of locust is masochistic and a crime done to our kids and their future, who instead deserve the best we can give them, not the worst.

In our hallowed cathedrals of consumerism and within our manured malls of materialism we are descending down a road of not only our own self destruction but the suicidal annihilation of this planet. In our jingoistic pursuit of euphoria via temporal comfort we are destroying the very things that we are seeking and the cost will be our children’s future and yet as hedonic-lapping lemmings, we scramble in our mad rush to the cliffs of destruction oblivious to the path we tread. Are we insane? We have made this world a very dangerous place and it isn’t so much that evil exists, it’s because so many turn away and then do nothing about what we do here in our selfish obstructive pursuits. We clamor and shriek for great and strong leadership to do what we seem too lazy or incapable of doing for ourselves. This is not what we need. We need good citizens who take responsibility for their own individual acts in this world and do what they can to make it a better one without dumping the burden on some leader who is then saddled with not only the personal overwhelming accountability of ‘saving the day’, but must come up with all the answers as we then worship such leadership who then gets corrupted by his/her own self-worth of perceived infallibility and by those deluded worshipping mobs. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and Mussolini were excellent examples of great strong leadership and what happened to them? They fed upon the adulation of the masses as they became surrounded by yes men and became more and more insulated from the realities of the day becoming more and more reclusive and separated from the people as they morphed into virtual Gods, and at the end they just became disillusional narcissistic pied pipers invariably sending their peoples to the cliff and a fall. ‘Good leadership’ is a double-edged mistake and in truth it is nothing more than an oxymoron, it manufactures bad leaders and bad citizens. For the leader shoulders far more of the burden than he can usually handle while the people expect the leader to do it all for them and hence makes them lazy and expectant upon the magic of the leader.

We are all children of the Maker and it is to God whom we must look to for our questions and answers. What we do here is being recorded and counted and I’m not talking about the government. Our time should be spent here trying to fix what is broken, trying to love the unloved, healing the sick, assisting the needy and we all know that, don’t we? Our time here is merely a passing fragment of a second and so we should be careful and wise as to what we do here.

When I go to see my maker, if he will see me, if he will talk to me He might say; I told you so and then I would probably reply: Sorry, I had to see for myself. To say I did what I came here to do would be naive, prideful and over 99.9% incorrect. I have always felt that I had some mission to accomplish and that I chose to come here to do something wonderful and good for all of humanity, don’t we all? For deep down within our selves we all do share this aspiration of altruism since each of us share this desire to help and to be needed, and loved for it. Yet, I, myself have strayed, became stained, wasn’t quite as smart or flawless as I deemed my self to be. Now at the end of my time here I am trying with every ounce of energy I can muster to at least finish here with a cleaner slate, to atone for what I’ve failed to accomplish, to atone for the mistakes I have made, and still being driven to succeed in doing something good or at least teaching what I’ve been taught to as many as I can reach. M. Gandhi said it most eloquently for me: You have to stand against the whole world although you may have to stand alone. You have stare in the face of the whole world although the world may look at you with blood-shot eyes. Do not fear. Trust the little voice residing within your heart. Forsake friends, wife and all; but testify for which you have lived and for which you have to die.

So much wrong has been done here and so many ills and injustices need healing and fixing. By the light of the Maker I have open eyes and wish to help others to see also. I have come from the cave, seen the light, now as a seagull, I have returned to the cave to show others that light does exist. Yet no one can change the world if it doesn’t want to be changed, you can’t force people to open their eyes if they don’t want to see, you can’t force them to hear what they don’t want to listen to and certainly cant induce them to think if they’re not inclined to. This is the crux of incompetence in the deeds and world of those who choose to teach, for they walk this tightrope of sanity while all around them, the insane who may enjoy the poisoned fruits of insanity fight the teacher with every step, and still the goal; sanity.

Gandhi fought an empire with nonviolence and yet the people he led fought among themselves, and still he was consumed by the violence he strove against. Eugene Debbs, Albert Schweitzer, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Barbara Mills, Louis Vitale, Steve Kelly, Kathy Gun, Rachel Corrie and many others found the light within themselves and shone it for far too short of a stay, and the world is much darker for their death’s. These people were giants and I am unworthy to utter their names and yet if I stand not to do what I know is right, who else will rise to carry the torch? We all stand upon the shoulders of giants who in turn stood upon the shoulders of giants and so on, and so on, and in this time, my time, this age, my age, I have to do what I know is right and sacrifice to the greater good. I have chosen my act.

To run from this task in ineptitude or insensitivity and it would then be a day that I wasted and to accede to this I cannot allow to pass. This struggle against violence, power, greed, selfishness and injustice cannot be in vain. I cannot force my values on those who have their own, who have their own path to follow and it is not my right to tell anyone that I am right, they are wrong and follow me. I am no authority, genius, rocket scientist, nor great wise man, truth being I’m just a simple ‘joe average’ man who has made many mistakes, still do, and through internal flaws and errors I have a thousand lifetimes to do before I can I say I have paid my dues. I could jump rope my pride under the belly of a millipede and if I could not then in this I would be a prideful fool. So, please if I ever come across as prideful or authoritative please forgive me for this would be my error. I am driven by atonement and this quote from Gandhi suits myself as well: For it is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from Him, who, as I fully know, governs every breath of my life, and whose offspring I am. I know that is the evil passions within that keep me so far from Him, and yet I cannot get away from them.

Yet I have found the path, I zig zag on it and it’s a light that shines into the darkest hole. We all will learn and grow up in our own pace and time and in our own way, for each of us have a path to tread and time to follow and do it. I have learned that what I can do is to practice the message to the best of my ability, be a good example for others and yet still, learn, then teach and if others accept, fantastic, if not then its not my right or job to force anyone to do anything. And still comes a time in a man’s, or woman’s life when they must walk the walk of their inner most beliefs and convictions. When the ills of the day are so despicable and yet denied, it is not our responsibly to judge or punish those who err, it is that persons job to throw a light on it, a statement must be made through the martyrdom of self sacrifice which is a testament of love for fellow man and the disagreement with national policy and perverted idioms. I accept such statement to make and if my effort saves one life, starts a snowball rolling towards a nonviolent revolution than my sacrifice will not be in vain. History will be my witness, God my judge, I pray for the faith to be worthy.

For I do stand upon the shoulders of giants and heroes, such as : Jesus, Buddha, Susan Anthony, Plato, Spartacus, Hannibal, and David Zonshein. I try not to emulate them but to take their best qualities as inspiration for my own actions and deeds. None of us can be a clone of the giants who were here before. Every age is different and each of us must use our own means and ideas to confront the violence and injustices of those days. I face the struggles of this day using the tools refined and honed from yesterday as I strive to try to spread their teachings to anyone, and as I write I thank these giants for blazing a trail that all of us can follow if we merely choose to. This is not rocket science but simple common sense and it is my conjecture that we all will ascent to this heightened level . . . inevitably. ‘To me its rather simple, if we merely love our Maker, each other, and do good deeds than that would be the sum total of our lessons here to learn. I have learned that evil is not defeated by using evil, instead by compassion and metaphorically morphing evil into good by example and deeds. Violence and force are iniquities that are used for selfish gain or repression and hence only wrong can come from these tools.

Apparently we have no choice in being here but we do have choice in what we do here. How we live-in this day and age is totally the choice of the individual. Governments are usually nothing but veiled threats of force and are instituted among the people to control spiced with the hope of some type of fairness that will interplay in the interactions of people within that society. Yet they would not be needed in such immensity if we as individuals would grow up, use our common sense and apply the most basic of ethics and values to each other. What is our purpose as individuals, societies, or as nations? Through the entire history of our kind has anyone come up and said we are worthy beings and what we need to do is have a goal, aspiration or objective? Of course many have, and usually