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http://angel04.gcu.edu/section/default.asp?id=554405
In your own words, explain the differences between the American law system of probable cause, and the reasonable basis standard required by the prosecutor in the International Criminal Court to bring charges.
The U.S. definition of probable cause has been measured by the U.S. Supreme Court in interpreting the fourth amendment of the bill of rights in its case determinations and these have served as criteria for the lower courts to follow in the proper application of probable cause as applicable to a plethora of local and federal laws and topics.It is necessarily a subjective standard to follow the guidelines of Terry v Ohio , the seminal case establishing the definition of probable cause . A particular suspicion on the part of law enforcement linked to a set of facts must lead a "reasonable person" to conclude that arrest and detention of a suspect is in order and that a possible illegal act has been committed.This excludes generalized suspicions not linked to a specific fact scenario.In 1968, the Supreme Court included in the definition of reasonable suspicion the following grounds and criteria:a law offcer's expertise an experience,a suspect's reputation, anonymous tips supported by other facts. These factors comprise the test of rasonableness in assessing probable cause to justify arrest of a suspect.
The reasonable basis standard of the International Court of Justice is similar in some respects to probable cause ,but is not so much based on legakl case preedent but proceeds on a case basis.The procedure i more intricate tan probable cause arrest and is initiated by the prosecutor and evaluated by the pretrial chamber on information in the prosecutor's possession fromreliable organs such as UN organs, NGO's, Guidelines are given in Article 15(2) and 15(3) of the Rome statute where standards are more spelled out, yet there is a wide latitude of standards , and the judges must approve of the pretrial investigation according to article 15(3).The reasonable basis standard is detailed in 15(4) and is a lower standard of evidence that does not require it to be foregone as to its conclusions ,but that it be reasonable (the subjective standard again) that a crime has been committed over which the ICC has jurisdiction: wa crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and aggression. The crime must have been committed after the Rome Statute has been enacted (July 1,2002) by a "National of a State Party".Other requirements requisite to enabling ICC jurisdiction are: "complementarity": are other national courts ivestigating re: alleged crimes or persons charged with those crimes. If the state is unwilling to investigate the crime(s), then Article 17 would empower the ICC to take jurisdiction; the "gravity" requirement to justify ICC intervention, including the persons, nature of their crimes and their modus operandi.The prosecutor need not etablish interests of justice as a provision for the investigation.Then tghe pretrial chamber may review the interest of victims and the gravity of the crimes involved. This basis is a much more detailed and thorough investigaion as to process (Article 53) which is spelled out than what is involved in assessing probable cause.
I might add that venue establishment is more primary in ICC assessments than in the jurisdictional determinations in state and local courts in the U.S.The Demjanjuk case is being tried in a German national court whereas the Mladic case is being taken to the ICC for want of prosecution by the national state of Belgrade Serbia. (http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6671724644852957271&postID=5177308667314487895) ( http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110529/ap_on_re_eu/eu_serbia_mladic )
http://www.answers.com/topic/probable-cause
http://www.peaceandjusticeinitiative.org/implementation-resources/proprio-motu-investigation-by-the-icc-prosecutor
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Ancient world dictionary finished — after 90 years
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110604/ap_on_re_us/us_postcard_the90_year_dictionary_project
Ancient world dictionary finished — after 90 years
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By SHARON COHEN, AP National Writer Sharon Cohen, Ap National Writer – Sat Jun 4, 9:56 am ET
CHICAGO – It was a monumental project with modest beginnings: a small group of scholars and some index cards. The plan was to explore a long-dead language that would reveal an ancient world of chariots and concubines, royal decrees and diaries — and omens that came from the heavens and sheep livers.
The year: 1921. The place: The University of Chicago. The project: Assembling an Assyrian dictionary based on words recorded on clay or stone tablets unearthed from ruins in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, written in a language that hadn't been uttered for more than 2,000 years. The scholars knew the project would take a long time. No one quite expected how very long.
Decades passed. The team grew. Scholars arrived from Vienna, Paris, Copenhagen, Jerusalem, Berlin, Helsinki, Baghdad and London, joining others from the U.S. and Canada. One generation gave way to the next, one century faded into the next. Some signed on early in their careers; they were still toiling away at retirement. The work was slow, sometimes frustrating and decidedly low-tech: Typewriters. Mimeograph machines. And index cards. Eventually, nearly 2 million of them.
And now, 90 years later, a finale. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is now officially complete — 21 volumes of Akkadian, a Semitic language (with several dialects, including Assyrian) that endured for 2,500 years. The project is more encyclopedia than glossary, offering a window into the ancient society of Mesopotamia, now modern-day Iraq, through every conceivable form of writing: love letters, recipes, tax records, medical prescriptions, astronomical observations, religious texts, contracts, epics, poems and more.
Why is there a need for a dictionary of a language last written around A.D. 100 that only a small number of scholars worldwide know of? Gil Stein, director of the university's Oriental Institute (the dictionary's home), has a ready answer:
"The Assyrian Dictionary gives us the key into the world's first urban civilization," he says. "Virtually everything that we take for granted ... has its origins in Mesopotamia, whether it's the origins of cities, of state societies, the invention of the wheel, the way we measure time, and most important the invention of writing.
"If we ever want to understand our roots," Stein adds, "we have to understand this first great civilization."
The translated cuneiform texts — originally written with wedged-shaped characters — reveal a culture where people expressed joy, anxiety and disappointment about the same events they do today: a child's birth, bad harvests, money troubles, boastful leaders.
"A lot of what you see is absolutely recognizable — people expressing fear and anger, expressing love, asking for love," says Matthew Stolper, a University of Chicago professor who worked on the project on and off over three decades. "There are inscriptions from kings that tell you how great they are, and inscriptions from others who tell you those guys weren't so great. ... There's also lot of ancient versions of `your check is in the mail.' And there's a common phrase in old Babylonian letters that literally means `don't worry about a thing.'"
There were omens, too — ways of divining the future by reading smoke patterns, the stars, the moon and sheep livers.
"Like all people at all times, they wanted to try to find some way of controlling their world," says Martha Roth, the dictionary's editor-in-charge and dean of humanities. "It's very difficult to draw the line between actually believing and being superstitious."
Robert Biggs, professor emeritus at the university, devoted nearly a half century to the dictionary, sometimes uncovering tablets on digs in the Iraq desert, sometimes poring over texts in museums in London and Baghdad. His specialty is Babylonian medicine. For almost an entire year, he studied thousands of references to sheep livers.
For example: If a sheep's gallbladder — part of the liver — was long and pointed, it meant the defeat of the enemy king. If there was a certain kind of crease on the liver, it could mean the king was going on a journey. A lunar eclipse could mean danger for a king.
But the tablets reached far beyond royalty. Biggs says they included everything from a disputed paternity case to agricultural loans to famine, where desperate people sold their children for cash. "Life was very fragile ... it was much more risky that it is now," he says.
Making sense of it all was painstaking work. Some of the wedge-shaped characters changed over the thousands of years, and the tablets excavated from ancient temples, palaces and cities were frequently crumbling. Often there was no punctuation, so it was hard to know where one word ended and the other began.
"You'd sit in a room with a good light and turn the tablet in various directions to see as much as possible," Biggs explains. "Quite often the tablets were broken so you might see part of a sign. And different people looking at the same thing would see something different because of the way you'd hold it."
"Sometimes it got to be very tedious," he adds. "Other times there was a sense of exhilaration if you could solve some problem or figure out what a rare word means."
Regardless, the work continued.
"You always saw the light at the end of the tunnel," Biggs says. "But the end of the tunnel kept getting further and further away."
An early 10-year completion deadline was soon deemed unrealistic. "Scholars always underestimated how difficult it would be," Roth says. "People always expected the project would end in their lifetime. What can I tell you? That's not always the way it goes."
There was much to research, much to record. By 1935, scholars already had 1 million index cards. It would take more than 30 years before the first of the 21 volumes was published. Most cover a single letter. The entire collection spans about 10,000 pages and 28,000 words. The definitions are more fitting for an encyclopedia; they provide cultural and historical context, similar to those in the Oxford English Dictionary.
"It's not such a word means king," Roth says. "It's a matter of understanding the thousands and thousands of references to the word king in every document in every period."
Roth notes that after arriving at the university in 1979, she asked to work on the word witness or witnessing. That took four to five years. On the other hand, there might be just a dozen references to a jar holding grain and that research could be complete in an afternoon.
Now that the dictionary is finished, Roth says there's a feeling of tremendous accomplishment and "a little bit of a sense of loss.... This has occupied my waking and sleeping moments for 32 years. You dream this stuff."
The end also brings a realization as more tablets are unearthed, more discoveries will be made.
"It's like driving a Porsche off the lot and looking in the Blue Book (listing a car's worth) and seeing how much value it's lost," Stolper says. "The moment it's done, it's out of date."
Biggs says the scholars are satisfied with the final version, but there is that lingering temptation.
"It might be nice to start over," he says, "but no one has the courage to do it anymore."
___
Online:
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary: http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects
Ancient world dictionary finished — after 90 years
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By SHARON COHEN, AP National Writer Sharon Cohen, Ap National Writer – Sat Jun 4, 9:56 am ET
CHICAGO – It was a monumental project with modest beginnings: a small group of scholars and some index cards. The plan was to explore a long-dead language that would reveal an ancient world of chariots and concubines, royal decrees and diaries — and omens that came from the heavens and sheep livers.
The year: 1921. The place: The University of Chicago. The project: Assembling an Assyrian dictionary based on words recorded on clay or stone tablets unearthed from ruins in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, written in a language that hadn't been uttered for more than 2,000 years. The scholars knew the project would take a long time. No one quite expected how very long.
Decades passed. The team grew. Scholars arrived from Vienna, Paris, Copenhagen, Jerusalem, Berlin, Helsinki, Baghdad and London, joining others from the U.S. and Canada. One generation gave way to the next, one century faded into the next. Some signed on early in their careers; they were still toiling away at retirement. The work was slow, sometimes frustrating and decidedly low-tech: Typewriters. Mimeograph machines. And index cards. Eventually, nearly 2 million of them.
And now, 90 years later, a finale. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is now officially complete — 21 volumes of Akkadian, a Semitic language (with several dialects, including Assyrian) that endured for 2,500 years. The project is more encyclopedia than glossary, offering a window into the ancient society of Mesopotamia, now modern-day Iraq, through every conceivable form of writing: love letters, recipes, tax records, medical prescriptions, astronomical observations, religious texts, contracts, epics, poems and more.
Why is there a need for a dictionary of a language last written around A.D. 100 that only a small number of scholars worldwide know of? Gil Stein, director of the university's Oriental Institute (the dictionary's home), has a ready answer:
"The Assyrian Dictionary gives us the key into the world's first urban civilization," he says. "Virtually everything that we take for granted ... has its origins in Mesopotamia, whether it's the origins of cities, of state societies, the invention of the wheel, the way we measure time, and most important the invention of writing.
"If we ever want to understand our roots," Stein adds, "we have to understand this first great civilization."
The translated cuneiform texts — originally written with wedged-shaped characters — reveal a culture where people expressed joy, anxiety and disappointment about the same events they do today: a child's birth, bad harvests, money troubles, boastful leaders.
"A lot of what you see is absolutely recognizable — people expressing fear and anger, expressing love, asking for love," says Matthew Stolper, a University of Chicago professor who worked on the project on and off over three decades. "There are inscriptions from kings that tell you how great they are, and inscriptions from others who tell you those guys weren't so great. ... There's also lot of ancient versions of `your check is in the mail.' And there's a common phrase in old Babylonian letters that literally means `don't worry about a thing.'"
There were omens, too — ways of divining the future by reading smoke patterns, the stars, the moon and sheep livers.
"Like all people at all times, they wanted to try to find some way of controlling their world," says Martha Roth, the dictionary's editor-in-charge and dean of humanities. "It's very difficult to draw the line between actually believing and being superstitious."
Robert Biggs, professor emeritus at the university, devoted nearly a half century to the dictionary, sometimes uncovering tablets on digs in the Iraq desert, sometimes poring over texts in museums in London and Baghdad. His specialty is Babylonian medicine. For almost an entire year, he studied thousands of references to sheep livers.
For example: If a sheep's gallbladder — part of the liver — was long and pointed, it meant the defeat of the enemy king. If there was a certain kind of crease on the liver, it could mean the king was going on a journey. A lunar eclipse could mean danger for a king.
But the tablets reached far beyond royalty. Biggs says they included everything from a disputed paternity case to agricultural loans to famine, where desperate people sold their children for cash. "Life was very fragile ... it was much more risky that it is now," he says.
Making sense of it all was painstaking work. Some of the wedge-shaped characters changed over the thousands of years, and the tablets excavated from ancient temples, palaces and cities were frequently crumbling. Often there was no punctuation, so it was hard to know where one word ended and the other began.
"You'd sit in a room with a good light and turn the tablet in various directions to see as much as possible," Biggs explains. "Quite often the tablets were broken so you might see part of a sign. And different people looking at the same thing would see something different because of the way you'd hold it."
"Sometimes it got to be very tedious," he adds. "Other times there was a sense of exhilaration if you could solve some problem or figure out what a rare word means."
Regardless, the work continued.
"You always saw the light at the end of the tunnel," Biggs says. "But the end of the tunnel kept getting further and further away."
An early 10-year completion deadline was soon deemed unrealistic. "Scholars always underestimated how difficult it would be," Roth says. "People always expected the project would end in their lifetime. What can I tell you? That's not always the way it goes."
There was much to research, much to record. By 1935, scholars already had 1 million index cards. It would take more than 30 years before the first of the 21 volumes was published. Most cover a single letter. The entire collection spans about 10,000 pages and 28,000 words. The definitions are more fitting for an encyclopedia; they provide cultural and historical context, similar to those in the Oxford English Dictionary.
"It's not such a word means king," Roth says. "It's a matter of understanding the thousands and thousands of references to the word king in every document in every period."
Roth notes that after arriving at the university in 1979, she asked to work on the word witness or witnessing. That took four to five years. On the other hand, there might be just a dozen references to a jar holding grain and that research could be complete in an afternoon.
Now that the dictionary is finished, Roth says there's a feeling of tremendous accomplishment and "a little bit of a sense of loss.... This has occupied my waking and sleeping moments for 32 years. You dream this stuff."
The end also brings a realization as more tablets are unearthed, more discoveries will be made.
"It's like driving a Porsche off the lot and looking in the Blue Book (listing a car's worth) and seeing how much value it's lost," Stolper says. "The moment it's done, it's out of date."
Biggs says the scholars are satisfied with the final version, but there is that lingering temptation.
"It might be nice to start over," he says, "but no one has the courage to do it anymore."
___
Online:
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary: http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects
do we really need an International Criminal Court?
The United Nations has authority to set up tribunals to address criminal offenders in global society. Therefore, do we really need an International Criminal Court?
The International Criminal Court is the first permanent, treaty based, international criminal court established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.
However, tribunals were established to try crimes committed only within a specific time-frame and during a specific conflict, there was general agreement that an independent, permanent criminal court was needed. On 17 July 1998, the international community reached an historic milestone when 120 States adopted the Rome Statute, the legal basis for establishing the permanent International Criminal Court.
I believe that we do need the ICC.
I agree with your assessment that we need a spcialized international criminal court defining the worst crimes of humanity as genocide, war crimes , and crimes against humanity,specifically defined in the Rome Statute and agreed upon by 120 nations.The UN tribunals have ad hoc situations with other than these crimes during a specific time of conflict with statutes of limitation. The ICC still adddresses a specific need spelled out by the mass incidents of genocide and war crimes during and after WWII, and hence the Hague tribunal. The uniqunessof the scenarios and crimes necessitated the Hague tribunal where specificity of the statute links with the UN charter a unprecedented and specific attention is paid to those crimes as well as a new foruth class of crimes of aggression.
The International Criminal Court is the first permanent, treaty based, international criminal court established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.
However, tribunals were established to try crimes committed only within a specific time-frame and during a specific conflict, there was general agreement that an independent, permanent criminal court was needed. On 17 July 1998, the international community reached an historic milestone when 120 States adopted the Rome Statute, the legal basis for establishing the permanent International Criminal Court.
I believe that we do need the ICC.
I agree with your assessment that we need a spcialized international criminal court defining the worst crimes of humanity as genocide, war crimes , and crimes against humanity,specifically defined in the Rome Statute and agreed upon by 120 nations.The UN tribunals have ad hoc situations with other than these crimes during a specific time of conflict with statutes of limitation. The ICC still adddresses a specific need spelled out by the mass incidents of genocide and war crimes during and after WWII, and hence the Hague tribunal. The uniqunessof the scenarios and crimes necessitated the Hague tribunal where specificity of the statute links with the UN charter a unprecedented and specific attention is paid to those crimes as well as a new foruth class of crimes of aggression.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Modern Myth and Non Linear Storytelling :Comics
Drawing Outside the Lines: A Talk with David Mack
James Curcio
James Curcio
This interview originally appeared on Modern Mythology. It will be run in the Immanence of Myth anthology along with many other interviews with creators working in the realms of modern myth.
James Curcio: I still remember the first time I encountered Kabuki. I was just browsing around a Barnes & Noble, buzzing on caffeine, and this beautifully illustrated hardcover book found its way into my hands. It's not hard to be taken in by the art, really, it is both graceful and bold -- but I actually laughed out loud when I started reading it -- there was a section where the characters were talking to one another, and then moving through a building. Now most sequential artists would draw panel after panel of them walking and talking, West Wing style, maybe breaking it up with different angles and whatnot so it's not just a bunch of talking heads. But you just give us a top down view of the building, and little talk bubbles as they wind their way around the maze. I just thought that was completely brilliant... I never would have thought of that, but then looking at it, it's just like "of course!" This is something I've seen continuing through these books, that you are really good at finding the straightest line, the best means of telling the story rather than just adhering to whatever storytelling conventions people might be used to.David Mack: I like how you described that. I think you described it very astutely. That is how I approach the art. As a tool of the writing. I try to consider what pace, or rhythm, or medium or visual personality of style of art will best and most effectively communicate that particular story or scene of the story.
Do you refer back to previous myths and stories when you write? Are there any that you find yourself returning to frequently?I allude to myth quite a bit in my work.Certainly, Kabuki often refers to a certain amount of Japanese mythology. The story often incorporates the framework of Japanese myths and the Japanese Ghost Story that was a central theme in the Kabuki plays.Kabuki also incorporates the traditional "Hero's Journey." The central myth that myths from all cultures and times continue to orbit around. From Biblical literature (which was probably my introduction to literature & mythology) to Greek Mythology, to folk stories around the globe. The scholar Joseph Campbell has written some incredible books about this: the journey of the hero, and the use of masks in mythology and storytelling.But Kabuki also corresponds to a template of children's literature and the mythology that has grown around that. Each of the Kabuki volumes alludes to a kind of children's fairy tale. Both western and eastern fairy tale mythology & children's literature is interwoven into the story. For instance the first volume of Kabuki is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll told a fantastical story that was essentially the journey of a child into adult consciousness.Hence the allegory of chess pieces. The story of a pawn into a queen. If the pawn can make it to the other side of the board they become the most powerful piece on the board.I used this iconography in Kabuki as well. In Kabuki Vol. 1, each main character pertains to a piece on the chess board. And each main character correlates to a character from Alice in Wonderland. The Twins, Siamese, are Tweedle Dee & Dum. The General is Humpty Dumpty, Scarab is the Beetle, Tigerlily & Snapdragon are named after the talking flowers in Through the looking glass and so on. When you know this, it is quite easy to correlate the characters. But when you don't know it consciously, there is still a mythological iconography that gives weight to the story subconsciously.
This is how I find it best to work as well... you don't depend on your audience to be familiar with a certain myth, but if older myths inform the birth of newer ones, it's almost like people can feel the power of that structure, even if they don't catch the reference...In the character of Echo in Daredevil, I told the Vision Quest story using the template of traditional Native American Folk tales & Mythology. I used the same act structure that the tales use. The same framing devices. The traditional Vision Quest stories are echoed in this story beat for beat. The Native American Manitou character is enacted by the Logan or Wolverine character in the story even though we never say his name. If you know the Marvel universe, you can recognize him as Wolverine. But if you are reading it as a Native American Vision Quest story, he is the Manitou, one of the animal spirits or nature spirits that appears in the last act of the Vision Quest to deliver helpful information to the questor that will benefit her tribe.In my children's book The Shy Creatures, mythology is central. All of the characters are mythological or cryptozoological creatures. They are borrowed from Greek myth in the case of the Cyclops, Pegasus, & phoenix, literary mythology in the case of the Push-me-pull-you, and international modern urban mythology in the case of the Latin Chupacabra, the Himalayan Ambominable Snowman, & the Scottish Loch Ness Monster.Where does the inspiration for you characters come from?
My stories are, in a sense, my playground to make sense of, and give an order to, all the things that I experience and think about. As such, key inspiration for characters and story comes from my childhood, my family, aspects of myself, people I've known, stories I've experienced and that have been told to me. Then the characters take on a life of their own in context of story.
Because the storytelling of comics can oftentimes be so visual -- in a way I think even more than film -- I often find myself writing for comics in images and then working the writing later. What's your writing process like?I always begin with the story. I write a very full script. I think of myself as a writer primarily and that gives me the freedom to use the art as another tool of the writing. As such, I try to think of what visual tone, or media, or art style, colors, or visual rhythm will best communicate each individual story or section of the story.And then I try to develop a visual look or visual them that will best tell that particular scene or sequence and serve as an overall visual identity to that particular story.Often, in the scripting stage I may think of several different visual motifs for a particular scene, and I will just write them into the script as notes of possible visual avenues to explore when drawing the scene later.But on each level there is room for spontaneity and improvement. After I do the art, I will then go back and rewrite and edit the original text to accommodate the new epiphanies that have happened in the visual translation.
Do you start with an image, words, a character, or does it really depend on the circumstance?It does vary from story to story, but in general, things begin with the character. Sometimes scenes begin with an idea of a striking visual image. Something that I know begins the scene and an image that may end it.But character arc is usually where things begin. Where is this character coming from -- where do they want to go -- what is causing them to behave as they do -- if they continue that behavior where does it take them? Can they change the behavior? Why would they do that?External and internal causal incidents. Sometimes this is very conscious in planning and it is also always intertwined to a certain amount of unconscious planning. The things in your head and soul that are happening and making order of things without you really knowing why at first.
I have come to think the exact same way about writing, no matter the ultimate medium that the story will be told in. Have you discovered any resistance to these less traditional storytelling devices? I can imagine some people who are really stuck on one method might get frustrated or confused, the same way the linear-obsessed oftentimes go nuts over non-linear narratives.You mentioned two great points. New forms of storytelling beyond the completely conventional, and non-linear narratives.I love the traditional and conventional tropes of storytelling and panel design in comics. However, I also feel I would be doing a disservice to the story, if I did not invent new ways of telling the story that are custom designed for the feel of that particular story. It would be ridiculous to tell every story the same way. Not to mention just plain lazy. The conventional and traditional tropes and devices of comics were originally invented for problem solving of specific storytelling situations.These problem solving techniques contributed and built the early grammar of comics.I'm actually being traditional in a way by continuing to invent new problem solving for particular stories. And by adding and building to the lexicon of comics, by contributing more options and subtleties to the grammar of comics.It seems lazy and ignorant to use solutions that were designed for specific storytelling problems, and use those as a rigid template for each and every story. I believe there is actually more clarity to each story, by letting that story solve its own storytelling challenges and have each story and issue that I do add a new dimension to the medium.I've built on so many things that brilliant creators before me have brought to the medium of comics, it is only fair that I give back to the medium with new designs for future stories to build on and revolutionize.As for linear vs non-linear storytelling: Each are a solution for a particular story that may best be served by it.I believe what is considered "linear storytelling" is actually the more stylized and fanciful, where "Non-linear storytelling" is closer to how we experience the real world day to day.
I would have to agree.Non-linear storytelling is the way each of us make our way through the day as we are having a conversation with someone and a physical action, and that conversation or action, triggers a memory of something from the past, and part of us follows the tangent in that direction. Then we think of something we have to do in the future and another part of our consciousness follows that stream of storytelling, and the various streams converge at points back with the physical action or external conversation or interaction we are having. It happens just about every minute of the day. All humans are able to follow that. So I see no reason not to show that in a story if that is the best solution for that particular story. Especially if you are following a story from a specific character's personal point of view.
James Curcio: I still remember the first time I encountered Kabuki. I was just browsing around a Barnes & Noble, buzzing on caffeine, and this beautifully illustrated hardcover book found its way into my hands. It's not hard to be taken in by the art, really, it is both graceful and bold -- but I actually laughed out loud when I started reading it -- there was a section where the characters were talking to one another, and then moving through a building. Now most sequential artists would draw panel after panel of them walking and talking, West Wing style, maybe breaking it up with different angles and whatnot so it's not just a bunch of talking heads. But you just give us a top down view of the building, and little talk bubbles as they wind their way around the maze. I just thought that was completely brilliant... I never would have thought of that, but then looking at it, it's just like "of course!" This is something I've seen continuing through these books, that you are really good at finding the straightest line, the best means of telling the story rather than just adhering to whatever storytelling conventions people might be used to.David Mack: I like how you described that. I think you described it very astutely. That is how I approach the art. As a tool of the writing. I try to consider what pace, or rhythm, or medium or visual personality of style of art will best and most effectively communicate that particular story or scene of the story.
Do you refer back to previous myths and stories when you write? Are there any that you find yourself returning to frequently?I allude to myth quite a bit in my work.Certainly, Kabuki often refers to a certain amount of Japanese mythology. The story often incorporates the framework of Japanese myths and the Japanese Ghost Story that was a central theme in the Kabuki plays.Kabuki also incorporates the traditional "Hero's Journey." The central myth that myths from all cultures and times continue to orbit around. From Biblical literature (which was probably my introduction to literature & mythology) to Greek Mythology, to folk stories around the globe. The scholar Joseph Campbell has written some incredible books about this: the journey of the hero, and the use of masks in mythology and storytelling.But Kabuki also corresponds to a template of children's literature and the mythology that has grown around that. Each of the Kabuki volumes alludes to a kind of children's fairy tale. Both western and eastern fairy tale mythology & children's literature is interwoven into the story. For instance the first volume of Kabuki is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll told a fantastical story that was essentially the journey of a child into adult consciousness.Hence the allegory of chess pieces. The story of a pawn into a queen. If the pawn can make it to the other side of the board they become the most powerful piece on the board.I used this iconography in Kabuki as well. In Kabuki Vol. 1, each main character pertains to a piece on the chess board. And each main character correlates to a character from Alice in Wonderland. The Twins, Siamese, are Tweedle Dee & Dum. The General is Humpty Dumpty, Scarab is the Beetle, Tigerlily & Snapdragon are named after the talking flowers in Through the looking glass and so on. When you know this, it is quite easy to correlate the characters. But when you don't know it consciously, there is still a mythological iconography that gives weight to the story subconsciously.
This is how I find it best to work as well... you don't depend on your audience to be familiar with a certain myth, but if older myths inform the birth of newer ones, it's almost like people can feel the power of that structure, even if they don't catch the reference...In the character of Echo in Daredevil, I told the Vision Quest story using the template of traditional Native American Folk tales & Mythology. I used the same act structure that the tales use. The same framing devices. The traditional Vision Quest stories are echoed in this story beat for beat. The Native American Manitou character is enacted by the Logan or Wolverine character in the story even though we never say his name. If you know the Marvel universe, you can recognize him as Wolverine. But if you are reading it as a Native American Vision Quest story, he is the Manitou, one of the animal spirits or nature spirits that appears in the last act of the Vision Quest to deliver helpful information to the questor that will benefit her tribe.In my children's book The Shy Creatures, mythology is central. All of the characters are mythological or cryptozoological creatures. They are borrowed from Greek myth in the case of the Cyclops, Pegasus, & phoenix, literary mythology in the case of the Push-me-pull-you, and international modern urban mythology in the case of the Latin Chupacabra, the Himalayan Ambominable Snowman, & the Scottish Loch Ness Monster.Where does the inspiration for you characters come from?
My stories are, in a sense, my playground to make sense of, and give an order to, all the things that I experience and think about. As such, key inspiration for characters and story comes from my childhood, my family, aspects of myself, people I've known, stories I've experienced and that have been told to me. Then the characters take on a life of their own in context of story.
Because the storytelling of comics can oftentimes be so visual -- in a way I think even more than film -- I often find myself writing for comics in images and then working the writing later. What's your writing process like?I always begin with the story. I write a very full script. I think of myself as a writer primarily and that gives me the freedom to use the art as another tool of the writing. As such, I try to think of what visual tone, or media, or art style, colors, or visual rhythm will best communicate each individual story or section of the story.And then I try to develop a visual look or visual them that will best tell that particular scene or sequence and serve as an overall visual identity to that particular story.Often, in the scripting stage I may think of several different visual motifs for a particular scene, and I will just write them into the script as notes of possible visual avenues to explore when drawing the scene later.But on each level there is room for spontaneity and improvement. After I do the art, I will then go back and rewrite and edit the original text to accommodate the new epiphanies that have happened in the visual translation.
Do you start with an image, words, a character, or does it really depend on the circumstance?It does vary from story to story, but in general, things begin with the character. Sometimes scenes begin with an idea of a striking visual image. Something that I know begins the scene and an image that may end it.But character arc is usually where things begin. Where is this character coming from -- where do they want to go -- what is causing them to behave as they do -- if they continue that behavior where does it take them? Can they change the behavior? Why would they do that?External and internal causal incidents. Sometimes this is very conscious in planning and it is also always intertwined to a certain amount of unconscious planning. The things in your head and soul that are happening and making order of things without you really knowing why at first.
I have come to think the exact same way about writing, no matter the ultimate medium that the story will be told in. Have you discovered any resistance to these less traditional storytelling devices? I can imagine some people who are really stuck on one method might get frustrated or confused, the same way the linear-obsessed oftentimes go nuts over non-linear narratives.You mentioned two great points. New forms of storytelling beyond the completely conventional, and non-linear narratives.I love the traditional and conventional tropes of storytelling and panel design in comics. However, I also feel I would be doing a disservice to the story, if I did not invent new ways of telling the story that are custom designed for the feel of that particular story. It would be ridiculous to tell every story the same way. Not to mention just plain lazy. The conventional and traditional tropes and devices of comics were originally invented for problem solving of specific storytelling situations.These problem solving techniques contributed and built the early grammar of comics.I'm actually being traditional in a way by continuing to invent new problem solving for particular stories. And by adding and building to the lexicon of comics, by contributing more options and subtleties to the grammar of comics.It seems lazy and ignorant to use solutions that were designed for specific storytelling problems, and use those as a rigid template for each and every story. I believe there is actually more clarity to each story, by letting that story solve its own storytelling challenges and have each story and issue that I do add a new dimension to the medium.I've built on so many things that brilliant creators before me have brought to the medium of comics, it is only fair that I give back to the medium with new designs for future stories to build on and revolutionize.As for linear vs non-linear storytelling: Each are a solution for a particular story that may best be served by it.I believe what is considered "linear storytelling" is actually the more stylized and fanciful, where "Non-linear storytelling" is closer to how we experience the real world day to day.
I would have to agree.Non-linear storytelling is the way each of us make our way through the day as we are having a conversation with someone and a physical action, and that conversation or action, triggers a memory of something from the past, and part of us follows the tangent in that direction. Then we think of something we have to do in the future and another part of our consciousness follows that stream of storytelling, and the various streams converge at points back with the physical action or external conversation or interaction we are having. It happens just about every minute of the day. All humans are able to follow that. So I see no reason not to show that in a story if that is the best solution for that particular story. Especially if you are following a story from a specific character's personal point of view.
I also noticed -- at least in Metamorphosis, the Kabuki graphic novel I've been reading -- that there are multiple overlapping narratives. You can read most of it like a traditional comic, just following the illustrations and the talk bubbles, but worked into the illustrations is a subtext that seems to come from the subconscious of the characters, if you want to call it that. In places it almost seems to come directly from their physical experience, written on their bodies like a tattoo. I'm curious how that storytelling device occurred to you, whether it's been gestating in your work for a long time or if you just started breaking away like that one day?A lot of this relates to the so called linear and non-linear storytelling choices. There is a hierarchy of things happening. What is being said, vs what is being done, vs what is being thought. So I figured out ways to show that visually.Mostly it was problem solving of how to incorporate the lettering with the image. Unlike in film, words in comics take actual physical space. In film a character can talk for paragraphs and none of the words will encroach over the image that you see. In comics you have to be very mindful of your word to image ratio, and your panel to time, to beat, to word ratio.
Yeah. When I am lettering a comic book, I find that I have written entirely too many words to fit comfortably with images. So it then forces me to edit very considerately what words must remain for special and pacing reasons.
Tell me about it! I think writing for comics teaches some very important lessons, even for writers who prefer to work primarily within prose.One of my solutions to this was to put one level of text into the images, so it creates a movement, if the idea it describes is meant to have a movement, and to be a sub-level of wording, if it is a thought or unconscious, subconscious or private string of words, to contrast the surface wording. It is a way to establish an order to the wording, and a rhythm to the actions, and an insight of words vs image of the characters.One of the things that I love about the medium of comics is that if they are done right, you can not distinguish between the art and the story. The art is the story, and words contribute to the design and art. At its most effective, you cannot distinguish where one starts and the other ends.
Can you tell me a bit about your early introduction to visual art and storytelling? How you got interested in it, how you feel you learned your trade?I'd say my mother has been my biggest artistic influence. She was a first grade teacher, and I was introduced to how she made art as visual learning devices for her students. She also introduced me very early on to visual stories in the form of children's books. My new children's book The Shy Creatures is in bookstores this week, as well as Amazon.com. It kind of picks up where my memory and experience of children's books as a kid left off.With comics, my real introduction of storytelling came when I read a friend's Daredevil when I was nine years old. It was a Frank Miller issue and it had quite an effect on me. I remember realizing how the writer was using so many visual techniques to set the mood and pacing of the story.After that, I later searched out more of Frank Miller's work, and in an interview of Miller and Klaus Jansen, I learned that Miller was inspired by Wil Eisner. So I then sought out Eisner's work and ordered his book Comics and Sequential Art and began my study of comic book storytelling.I should mention that I'm working on a new Daredevil series right now in which I am thrilled to collaborate with some of the creators that inspired me as a kid. It is called Daredevil: End of Days. I'm co-writing it with Brian Michael Bendis, and we are working with Klaus Jansen and Bill Sienkiewicz who are doing the art for it. Alex Maleev is doing the covers, and Brian and I are thrilled to be writing this as our love letter to Daredevil with such incredible artists that have dedicated large chunks of their careers to building the history of this character.
I see you've worked with Andy Lee. I had a table at Megacon in 2005 and met him when I was making my rounds, and have been talking off and on since... I'd never seen someone work so fast -- a real benefit to him at con's, I'm sure, when people are paying you $30 an original. He actually struck me with a similar, really open and friendly vibe. You know there's this conception of comic artists being these kind of socially retarded troglodytes. I keep getting that illusion shattered. What did you collaborate with him on?I've been close friends with Andy Lee for over 15 years. When he was beginning his art career he moved into my house and we shared it as a studio and learned quite a bit from one another. Not unlike the relationship with Kabuki, and Akemi, and M.C. Square working from the House 13 in the current Kabuki -- The Alchemy series.It was kind of like Fight Club. But with art instead of soap.I learned quite a bit from his Chinese Calligraphy and his quick spontaneous style. And I like to think I contributed some insights to his art approach as well. He was living and working from my house while I created the Kabuki: Metamorphosis volume that you mentioned.We've collaborated a lot on various personal works and paintings as well as some comic book work. For Marvel, we worked on Brian Michael Bendis' Marvel Team Up story on the Master of Kung Fu issues. Andy Lee contributed some Kabuki gallery work to the Kabuki Images book that included interpretations from some of my favorite artists. Also to Brian Michael Bendis' Jinx collection and more.I think you can find more info on this and any of my other work at davidmackguide.com which is updated with new stuff every day.-----David Mack is one of the only creators to be listed in both the Top Ten Writers List, and the Top Ten Artists List in Wizard Magazine. Mack's writing and art work on KABUKI, have earned him international acclaim for his innovative storytelling, sophisticated content, mixed media painting techniques, and page design. KABUKI is available internationally and has been translated in seven different languages, in addition to nearly two million copies of KABUKI Comics, Paperbacks, and Hard cover graphic novels in print in the U.S. alone. Mack has toured and exhibited his work throughout, Europe, Asia, and America with numerous gallery shows, and book signing tours at premier bookstores in over a dozen countries. He was the first American to be nominated for Germany's most prestigious Max-Und-Moritz award in the category of Best Imported Comic.Mack has illustrated and designed jazz and rock albums for both American and Japanese Labels (including work for Paul McCartney), painted Tori Amos for her RAINN benefit calendars, designed toys and packaging for companies in Hong Kong, animation art for MTV, ad campaigns for SAKURA art materials, written and designed video games for film director John Woo and Electronic Arts, and contributed the artwork for Dr. Arun Ghandi's essay on the "Culture of Non-Violence".Mack's KABUKI books have been the subject of under-graduate and graduate university courses in Art and Literature, and listed as required reading. His work has been studied in graduate seminars at USC and hung in the Los Angeles Museum of Art. He's lectured at universities and taught classes in writing, drawing, and painting all over the world, including a Masterclass at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, for Japan's School of Communication Arts of Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, and an invitation to speak at Harvard as the Guest of Honor at their annual Science Fiction Writing convention for 2005. Besides working for Twentieth Century Fox as a writer of the treatment to the Kabuki motion picture, Mack's film credits also include, Visual Designer, Creative Consultant, and Co-Producer.Currently Mack is working with the Philip K. Dick Estate to adapt the Science Fiction Master's work to graphic novels at Marvel Comics, Co-writing a new Daredevil story with Brian Michael Bendis, and writing his new children's books.
The Necessity of the Hague
I believe my reply to John's post is why I favor the ICC at the Hague where specific attention is paid to genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity,and aggression on a global acale. These crimes are well defined without statute of limitations and are linked to the UN charter, are subscribed to globally, and are unique to the post WWII era. Ad hoc tribunals to try war criminals in a specific conflict with statutes of limitations are more descriptive of ICJ cases and are more legalistically intricate insofar as extradition is concerned such as the cases referenced on the ICJ website. The research web site in our current readings afforded me much insight into the Rome statute and the need for galvanizing definitions of standards of evidence and categorizing these unique cimes by definition of elements. Much thought went into the definition of aggression, and the standards of evidence were quite in line with common law elements of evidentiary standards in U.S. federal law as commented on in Lexis.The Rome treaty and this work on specificity in relating to the crimes of our era necessitated the Hague tribunal as unique and separate and the global community has recognized its need.
Note the below excerpted topics and the similarity to the common law concepts of discovery and disclosure: I obtained this and the Rome statute from the excellent web site alluded to below.
____________________________________________________________________
Edward:
As the world becomes increasingly global, international issues are logically on the rise--including criminal issues.
Why do you think ut took the international community so long to adopt a permanent ICC?
Was it nationalism? What other factors may have played a part?
The need for the ICC was not fully recognized until presented with the debacle of those crimes of genocide, war crimes, and aggression which were anti humanitarian crimes .The spectre either was not so appaling as during and after WWII , or else the global community turned a blind eye to them which they no longer could do because the spectre was so evident and these crimes were widespread and embedded in the global consciousness.Nationalism and its perversive and indeed pervasive camouflages and deceptions were seen in a more glaring light as counter to the true interests of humanity and also the nationalistic perversions of minority rights were seen as an endangerment to all nations. I believe the spectre of the Holocaust played a formative role.
Chapter 4 Provisions relating to various stages of the
proceedings 22
Section I Evidence 22
Rule 63 General provisions relating to evidence 22
Rule 64 Procedure relating to the relevance or admissibility of evidence 22
Rule 65 Compellability of witnesses 22
Rule 66 Solemn undertaking 23
Rule 67 Live testimony by means of audio or video-link technology 23
Rule 68 Prior recorded testimony 23
Rule 69 Agreements as to evidence 24
Rule 70 Principles of evidence in cases of sexual violence 24
Rule 71 Evidence of other sexual conduct 24
Rule 72 In camera procedure to consider relevance or admissibility of evidence 24
Rule 73 Privileged communications and information 25
Rule 74 Self-incrimination by a witness 26
Rule 75 Incrimination by family members 28
Section II Disclosure 28
Rule 76 Pre-trial disclosure relating to prosecution witnesses 28
Rule 77 Inspection of material in possession or control of the Prosecutor 28
Rule 78 Inspection of material in possession or control of the defence 28
Rule 79 Disclosure by the defence 29
Rule 80 Procedures for raising a ground for excluding criminal responsibility under
article 31, paragraph 3 29
Rule 81 Restrictions on disclosure 29
Rule 82 Restrictions on disclosure of material and information protected under
article 54, paragraph 3 (e) 30
Rule 83 Ruling on exculpatory evidence under article 67, paragraph 2 31
Rule 84 Disclosure and additional evidence for trial 31
http://www.eisil.org/index.php?sid=438497646&t=sub_pages&cat=500
Note the below excerpted topics and the similarity to the common law concepts of discovery and disclosure: I obtained this and the Rome statute from the excellent web site alluded to below.
____________________________________________________________________
Edward:
As the world becomes increasingly global, international issues are logically on the rise--including criminal issues.
Why do you think ut took the international community so long to adopt a permanent ICC?
Was it nationalism? What other factors may have played a part?
The need for the ICC was not fully recognized until presented with the debacle of those crimes of genocide, war crimes, and aggression which were anti humanitarian crimes .The spectre either was not so appaling as during and after WWII , or else the global community turned a blind eye to them which they no longer could do because the spectre was so evident and these crimes were widespread and embedded in the global consciousness.Nationalism and its perversive and indeed pervasive camouflages and deceptions were seen in a more glaring light as counter to the true interests of humanity and also the nationalistic perversions of minority rights were seen as an endangerment to all nations. I believe the spectre of the Holocaust played a formative role.
Chapter 4 Provisions relating to various stages of the
proceedings 22
Section I Evidence 22
Rule 63 General provisions relating to evidence 22
Rule 64 Procedure relating to the relevance or admissibility of evidence 22
Rule 65 Compellability of witnesses 22
Rule 66 Solemn undertaking 23
Rule 67 Live testimony by means of audio or video-link technology 23
Rule 68 Prior recorded testimony 23
Rule 69 Agreements as to evidence 24
Rule 70 Principles of evidence in cases of sexual violence 24
Rule 71 Evidence of other sexual conduct 24
Rule 72 In camera procedure to consider relevance or admissibility of evidence 24
Rule 73 Privileged communications and information 25
Rule 74 Self-incrimination by a witness 26
Rule 75 Incrimination by family members 28
Section II Disclosure 28
Rule 76 Pre-trial disclosure relating to prosecution witnesses 28
Rule 77 Inspection of material in possession or control of the Prosecutor 28
Rule 78 Inspection of material in possession or control of the defence 28
Rule 79 Disclosure by the defence 29
Rule 80 Procedures for raising a ground for excluding criminal responsibility under
article 31, paragraph 3 29
Rule 81 Restrictions on disclosure 29
Rule 82 Restrictions on disclosure of material and information protected under
article 54, paragraph 3 (e) 30
Rule 83 Ruling on exculpatory evidence under article 67, paragraph 2 31
Rule 84 Disclosure and additional evidence for trial 31
http://www.eisil.org/index.php?sid=438497646&t=sub_pages&cat=500
Thursday, June 2, 2011
AP IMPACT: US declines to try half Native crimes
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110531/ap_on_re_us/us_tribal_crime_justice
AP IMPACT: US declines to try half Native crimes
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AP – This March 25, 2011, image shows Navajo Nation chief prosecutor Bernadine Martin looking through a folder …
By FELICIA FONSECA AND SUDHIN THANAWALA, Associated Press Felicia Fonseca And Sudhin Thanawala, Associated Press – Tue May 31, 4:23 pm ET
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. – There was swelling on the little girl's skull and hemorrhages around her brain. There was a tear between her right ear and scalp. The scars on her 36-pound body were consistent with burns from a space heater, a curling iron and hot noodles.
The mother said she had accidentally rolled over onto her daughter in bed, smothering her. The medical examiner concluded that the brown-eyed toddler with the wavy dark hair had been beaten, declaring her death a homicide.
Had 2-year-old Kiara Harvey died elsewhere the case likely would have been handled by the county sheriff or police, and the local district attorney.
But Kiara was a Navajo and she lived on the expansive Navajo Nation. On tribal lands, only federal prosecutions can lead to serious penalties for major crimes involving Native Americans. Those prosecutors, however, end up declining to pursue half of the cases nationally.
"No one speaks for that baby," said Bernadine Martin, the Navajo Nation's chief prosecutor. "It's OK to kill her and go on because prosecutors apparently don't want to put a little more effort into investigations."
In the Arizona portion of the Navajo Nation, which also stretches into New Mexico and Utah, Kiara's case was one of 37 that federal prosecutors declined to take during a 9-month period last year, an Associated Press review found.
Among all tribes in Arizona during the same period, there were 122 such cases. The overwhelming majority were alleged sex crimes that included rape and abusive sexual contact, followed by assaults. Nineteen cases involving deaths were rejected.
The AP's analysis found the reasons to be both complicated and frustratingly similar, and perhaps as exasperating to federal prosecutors as they are to tribal authorities. They cited poor evidence, reluctant witnesses and jurisdictional issues.
Federal authorities "want to prosecute the individual, they want to get a stiff sentence, they want to go to trial, so declining it is tough," said Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, whose office issued the letter saying that it would not take the Kiara Harvey case.
"It's not a process that leaves anyone with any comfort," he said.
Whatever the reasons, no one disputes that many people suspected of violent crimes are walking free on reservations, or are lightly punished under tribal laws that allow only a year in jail — or up to 3 years if the tribe has trained judges and tribal courts can guarantee that defendants get legal aid.
The Arizona letters provide a window into a much larger government study of Department of Justice records in which 50 percent of the 9,000 cases filed from tribal lands during fiscal years 2005-2009 were declined.
In the study, 42 percent of rejections were attributed to weak or insufficient admissible evidence; 18 percent to "no federal offense evident;" and another 12 percent to witness problems.
In the AP's Arizona review, the reasons — many cases cite more than one — were:
• 59 percent cited insufficient or inadmissible evidence. That could mean anything from inferior investigations by law enforcement to inadequate crime scene preservation.
• 27 percent cited witness problems, which can include witnesses recanting, being viewed as not credible, or simply disappearing.
• 16 percent cited a lack of jurisdiction, which can speak to the level of a crime. For example, the injuries of a detention sergeant beaten by an inmate weren't serious enough to be a federal crime.
The Government Accountability Office's study was published after a change in federal law last summer meant to bolster justice on tribal lands. The report was produced at the behest of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs led by then-Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota.
Former U.S. attorneys testified that reservation cases were often not treated as a priority, Dorgan told the AP in an interview before the bill was passed. "In many cases, it didn't get done. The result is that violent crime continues and those that commit them don't get prosecuted."
DOJ officials don't like being measured by declination rates.
"Unfortunately, federal declination numbers on face value, without full context, are not an appropriate measure of whether justice was served," DOJ spokeswoman Jessica Smith said. The numbers don't capture the reasons cases are rejected and miss those that are prosecuted outside the federal system, she said.
The declination rate for other federal cases, which can include terrorism, environmental violations or corruption, is not directly applicable since they are so different from the types of cases in Indian Country, said David Maurer, who helped author the GAO study.
The Justice Department has reported that the crime rates experienced by Native Americans are two and a half times higher than those experienced by the general population, and that violent crime happens in Indian Country at a rate of 101 per 1,000 persons.
Federal prosecutors in South Dakota and Arizona had the largest number of cases reported from Indian Country. Each comprised some 24 percent of the total national caseload, according to the GAO report.
Arizona has 12 federally recognized tribes, with the Navajo Nation being the largest in number and land area. Federal prosecutors received 2,538 cases and declined 38 percent of them. South Dakota has seven federally recognized Indian tribes, including the well-known Oglala Sioux at Pine Ridge and Rosebud Sioux at Rosebud. Federal prosecutors there received 2,414 cases, declining 61 percent.
Brendan Johnson, the U.S. attorney for South Dakota, said a lack of manpower makes it more difficult to investigate and prosecute cases. "We need more police officers. We need more investigators," he said.
Johnson said a lack of collaboration between tribes and federal prosecutors is also to blame.
His office has focused on improving ties with tribes by having an assistant U.S. attorney spend most of his week at one reservation and working to have the tribal prosecutor on another reservation designated a special U.S. attorney, he said. That would allow the attorney to come into federal court and help prosecute cases.
AP IMPACT: US declines to try half Native crimes
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AP – This March 25, 2011, image shows Navajo Nation chief prosecutor Bernadine Martin looking through a folder …
By FELICIA FONSECA AND SUDHIN THANAWALA, Associated Press Felicia Fonseca And Sudhin Thanawala, Associated Press – Tue May 31, 4:23 pm ET
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. – There was swelling on the little girl's skull and hemorrhages around her brain. There was a tear between her right ear and scalp. The scars on her 36-pound body were consistent with burns from a space heater, a curling iron and hot noodles.
The mother said she had accidentally rolled over onto her daughter in bed, smothering her. The medical examiner concluded that the brown-eyed toddler with the wavy dark hair had been beaten, declaring her death a homicide.
Had 2-year-old Kiara Harvey died elsewhere the case likely would have been handled by the county sheriff or police, and the local district attorney.
But Kiara was a Navajo and she lived on the expansive Navajo Nation. On tribal lands, only federal prosecutions can lead to serious penalties for major crimes involving Native Americans. Those prosecutors, however, end up declining to pursue half of the cases nationally.
"No one speaks for that baby," said Bernadine Martin, the Navajo Nation's chief prosecutor. "It's OK to kill her and go on because prosecutors apparently don't want to put a little more effort into investigations."
In the Arizona portion of the Navajo Nation, which also stretches into New Mexico and Utah, Kiara's case was one of 37 that federal prosecutors declined to take during a 9-month period last year, an Associated Press review found.
Among all tribes in Arizona during the same period, there were 122 such cases. The overwhelming majority were alleged sex crimes that included rape and abusive sexual contact, followed by assaults. Nineteen cases involving deaths were rejected.
The AP's analysis found the reasons to be both complicated and frustratingly similar, and perhaps as exasperating to federal prosecutors as they are to tribal authorities. They cited poor evidence, reluctant witnesses and jurisdictional issues.
Federal authorities "want to prosecute the individual, they want to get a stiff sentence, they want to go to trial, so declining it is tough," said Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, whose office issued the letter saying that it would not take the Kiara Harvey case.
"It's not a process that leaves anyone with any comfort," he said.
Whatever the reasons, no one disputes that many people suspected of violent crimes are walking free on reservations, or are lightly punished under tribal laws that allow only a year in jail — or up to 3 years if the tribe has trained judges and tribal courts can guarantee that defendants get legal aid.
The Arizona letters provide a window into a much larger government study of Department of Justice records in which 50 percent of the 9,000 cases filed from tribal lands during fiscal years 2005-2009 were declined.
In the study, 42 percent of rejections were attributed to weak or insufficient admissible evidence; 18 percent to "no federal offense evident;" and another 12 percent to witness problems.
In the AP's Arizona review, the reasons — many cases cite more than one — were:
• 59 percent cited insufficient or inadmissible evidence. That could mean anything from inferior investigations by law enforcement to inadequate crime scene preservation.
• 27 percent cited witness problems, which can include witnesses recanting, being viewed as not credible, or simply disappearing.
• 16 percent cited a lack of jurisdiction, which can speak to the level of a crime. For example, the injuries of a detention sergeant beaten by an inmate weren't serious enough to be a federal crime.
The Government Accountability Office's study was published after a change in federal law last summer meant to bolster justice on tribal lands. The report was produced at the behest of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs led by then-Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota.
Former U.S. attorneys testified that reservation cases were often not treated as a priority, Dorgan told the AP in an interview before the bill was passed. "In many cases, it didn't get done. The result is that violent crime continues and those that commit them don't get prosecuted."
DOJ officials don't like being measured by declination rates.
"Unfortunately, federal declination numbers on face value, without full context, are not an appropriate measure of whether justice was served," DOJ spokeswoman Jessica Smith said. The numbers don't capture the reasons cases are rejected and miss those that are prosecuted outside the federal system, she said.
The declination rate for other federal cases, which can include terrorism, environmental violations or corruption, is not directly applicable since they are so different from the types of cases in Indian Country, said David Maurer, who helped author the GAO study.
The Justice Department has reported that the crime rates experienced by Native Americans are two and a half times higher than those experienced by the general population, and that violent crime happens in Indian Country at a rate of 101 per 1,000 persons.
Federal prosecutors in South Dakota and Arizona had the largest number of cases reported from Indian Country. Each comprised some 24 percent of the total national caseload, according to the GAO report.
Arizona has 12 federally recognized tribes, with the Navajo Nation being the largest in number and land area. Federal prosecutors received 2,538 cases and declined 38 percent of them. South Dakota has seven federally recognized Indian tribes, including the well-known Oglala Sioux at Pine Ridge and Rosebud Sioux at Rosebud. Federal prosecutors there received 2,414 cases, declining 61 percent.
Brendan Johnson, the U.S. attorney for South Dakota, said a lack of manpower makes it more difficult to investigate and prosecute cases. "We need more police officers. We need more investigators," he said.
Johnson said a lack of collaboration between tribes and federal prosecutors is also to blame.
His office has focused on improving ties with tribes by having an assistant U.S. attorney spend most of his week at one reservation and working to have the tribal prosecutor on another reservation designated a special U.S. attorney, he said. That would allow the attorney to come into federal court and help prosecute cases.
____________________________________________________________________
The Kiara Harvey Case
In the Navajo Nation capital of Window Rock, the Navajo prosecutor keeps the Kiara Harvey case rejection letter in a red folder on her cluttered desk. The letter offers details of Kiara's death in Cove, 145 miles to the north, on June 6, 2008:
Kiara woke up early that morning, crying, and followed her father into the living room as he was leaving for work. An aunt said he picked up the girl wearing a shirt, diaper and socks and took her to a bedroom where her mother and sister were sleeping.
When her mother tried to wake her around 8:30 a.m., Kiara was cold to the touch and her body was stiff, according to the initial report by tribal police — who arrived 75 minutes after the mother called. The officers wrote that they saw no signs of foul play, but noted bruising and burns on her body.
New Mexico medical examiner Ross Reichard, whose office was closest to Cove, ruled out the mother's assertion that she had accidentally smothered the child. The girl was "beaten by assailant(s)," he reported. But he said he couldn't rule out that the child was with her father at the time she was fatally injured.
Kiara's parents no longer live together but maintain contact for the sake of their children, her mother, Norena Joe, said in a phone interview with the AP. She declined to talk about her daughter's death.
Both parents denied any abuse, according to FBI records obtained by the AP as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.
Burke, the U.S. attorney in Arizona, wouldn't say when his office received the case from the FBI, but the bureau's records show that it was more than 19 months after Kiara's death. FBI agents — along with those from the Bureau of Indian Affairs — conduct most of the federal investigations in Indian Country.
"You have a situation where the only two people in the room are the parents, and being able to say we have enough on one as opposed to the other, that has to be really solid," Burke said. "It is really a disturbing situation, but it just doesn't get you a conviction."
In the Navajo Nation capital of Window Rock, the Navajo prosecutor keeps the Kiara Harvey case rejection letter in a red folder on her cluttered desk. The letter offers details of Kiara's death in Cove, 145 miles to the north, on June 6, 2008:
Kiara woke up early that morning, crying, and followed her father into the living room as he was leaving for work. An aunt said he picked up the girl wearing a shirt, diaper and socks and took her to a bedroom where her mother and sister were sleeping.
When her mother tried to wake her around 8:30 a.m., Kiara was cold to the touch and her body was stiff, according to the initial report by tribal police — who arrived 75 minutes after the mother called. The officers wrote that they saw no signs of foul play, but noted bruising and burns on her body.
New Mexico medical examiner Ross Reichard, whose office was closest to Cove, ruled out the mother's assertion that she had accidentally smothered the child. The girl was "beaten by assailant(s)," he reported. But he said he couldn't rule out that the child was with her father at the time she was fatally injured.
Kiara's parents no longer live together but maintain contact for the sake of their children, her mother, Norena Joe, said in a phone interview with the AP. She declined to talk about her daughter's death.
Both parents denied any abuse, according to FBI records obtained by the AP as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.
Burke, the U.S. attorney in Arizona, wouldn't say when his office received the case from the FBI, but the bureau's records show that it was more than 19 months after Kiara's death. FBI agents — along with those from the Bureau of Indian Affairs — conduct most of the federal investigations in Indian Country.
"You have a situation where the only two people in the room are the parents, and being able to say we have enough on one as opposed to the other, that has to be really solid," Burke said. "It is really a disturbing situation, but it just doesn't get you a conviction."
____________________________________________________________________
Federal prosecutors rejected the case more than two years after Kiara died.
Martin received the case file from Navajo investigators at the end of March, including copies of the autopsy report, interviews, pictures and results of polygraph tests that, according to the case rejection letter, the father passed and the mother failed.
Mac Rominger, supervisory special agent for the FBI's Flagstaff office, declined to comment specifically on Kiara's death. But, he said, "There are rarely more difficult cases to prove than cases involving infants who are the victims of homicide."
Even if Martin can get a conviction in the child's death under tribal law, the maximum sentence would be one year in jail.
John Major, the chief prosecutor for the White Mountain Apache Tribe in eastern Arizona, said tribal authorities there pursue charges under tribal law even when cases are referred to the federal government. If federal prosecutors take the case, tribal charges often are dropped. If not, the tribe still can pursue justice. Federal prosecutors rejected 20 cases from the tribe over nine months last year. why do they pursue chargea in this manner due to the close knit community and to have these charges closed to the larger community and govt? MY COMMENT LENIECNY ISSUE WHY -THE TRIBE KNOWS FAR BETTER THE EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES AND REVERBERATIONS THAT CAN OCCUR
"The federal system is like a huge freight train that, when it goes, it's very powerful. But it takes a long time to accelerate from a dead stop and get up to speed," Major said.
Under last year's Tribal Law and Order Act sponsored by Dorgan, federal prosecutors must explain declinations to tribal prosecutors and provide evidence that could be used in tribal court to prosecute the case.
When Burke became U.S. attorney in Arizona in late 2009, he sent a letter to tribes saying that every case referred to his office would have a 30-day turnaround. In the past, that communication hadn't been made to tribal prosecutors for months or years.
Burke doesn't dismiss criticism of those delays, and said those affected by the crimes have a right to assume a lack of interest on the part of federal prosecutors when cases are declined. By communicating better and using the rejection letters as teaching tools, "we're doing a better job" of helping tribal leaders understand why there was a problem with the case, he said.
Tribal prosecutors in Arizona say they largely agree with the federal government's reasons for declining cases but often don't have the resources to investigate for themselves.
The 270 Navajo police officers and criminal investigators respond to 235,000 calls a year on the 27,000-square-mile reservation, the size of West Virginia, and officials say it's difficult to do more than race from one crime scene to another.
The Navajo prosecutor said none of the 37 Navajo cases declined for federal prosecution in the Arizona tract of the vast reservation have been prosecuted under tribal law.
The large number of declined sex assault cases, both in the national study and in the AP's Arizona survey, are particularly problematic because the victim and suspect often know one another, making the victim reluctant to pursue charges, BIA officials said.
"I hate to see that our Native women here seek help, cry for help, but no one helps them," said Doreen Gatewood, a victims' advocate for the White Mountain Apache Tribe.
Domestic violence charges face similar hurdles.
"You have a very close-knit community that's tied together by family or traditional means," said Darren Cruzan, deputy director of the BIA's Office of Justice Services and a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. "Everybody kind of knows everybody else." close knit community and desire to keep everything private and at home MY COMMENT
Martin, the Navajo prosecutor, holds out hope for a tribal prosecution in Kiara's case, saying evidentiary rules that differ under tribal law may provide an opening. "We can't let this one go," Martin said. "They may get a `not guilty,' but we're going to make our best effort to let the public know you can't kill your kid and get away with it."
Kiara has now been dead longer than she was alive. Martin knows she must act quickly. The tribe's three-year statute of limitations — the last chance to file charges — expires June 6. these rules reflect the desire for home rule and an understanding of the why behind the crimes and are so disparate from the evidence rules the federal courts have and the criminal sanctions involved there- my comment
___
Thanawala reported from San Francisco.
___
Felicia Fonseca can be reached at _http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_us/storytext/us_tribal_crime_justice/41686733/SIG=10ub4utl7/*http://twitter.com/FonsecaAP
Federal prosecutors rejected the case more than two years after Kiara died.
Martin received the case file from Navajo investigators at the end of March, including copies of the autopsy report, interviews, pictures and results of polygraph tests that, according to the case rejection letter, the father passed and the mother failed.
Mac Rominger, supervisory special agent for the FBI's Flagstaff office, declined to comment specifically on Kiara's death. But, he said, "There are rarely more difficult cases to prove than cases involving infants who are the victims of homicide."
Even if Martin can get a conviction in the child's death under tribal law, the maximum sentence would be one year in jail.
John Major, the chief prosecutor for the White Mountain Apache Tribe in eastern Arizona, said tribal authorities there pursue charges under tribal law even when cases are referred to the federal government. If federal prosecutors take the case, tribal charges often are dropped. If not, the tribe still can pursue justice. Federal prosecutors rejected 20 cases from the tribe over nine months last year. why do they pursue chargea in this manner due to the close knit community and to have these charges closed to the larger community and govt? MY COMMENT LENIECNY ISSUE WHY -THE TRIBE KNOWS FAR BETTER THE EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES AND REVERBERATIONS THAT CAN OCCUR
"The federal system is like a huge freight train that, when it goes, it's very powerful. But it takes a long time to accelerate from a dead stop and get up to speed," Major said.
Under last year's Tribal Law and Order Act sponsored by Dorgan, federal prosecutors must explain declinations to tribal prosecutors and provide evidence that could be used in tribal court to prosecute the case.
When Burke became U.S. attorney in Arizona in late 2009, he sent a letter to tribes saying that every case referred to his office would have a 30-day turnaround. In the past, that communication hadn't been made to tribal prosecutors for months or years.
Burke doesn't dismiss criticism of those delays, and said those affected by the crimes have a right to assume a lack of interest on the part of federal prosecutors when cases are declined. By communicating better and using the rejection letters as teaching tools, "we're doing a better job" of helping tribal leaders understand why there was a problem with the case, he said.
Tribal prosecutors in Arizona say they largely agree with the federal government's reasons for declining cases but often don't have the resources to investigate for themselves.
The 270 Navajo police officers and criminal investigators respond to 235,000 calls a year on the 27,000-square-mile reservation, the size of West Virginia, and officials say it's difficult to do more than race from one crime scene to another.
The Navajo prosecutor said none of the 37 Navajo cases declined for federal prosecution in the Arizona tract of the vast reservation have been prosecuted under tribal law.
The large number of declined sex assault cases, both in the national study and in the AP's Arizona survey, are particularly problematic because the victim and suspect often know one another, making the victim reluctant to pursue charges, BIA officials said.
"I hate to see that our Native women here seek help, cry for help, but no one helps them," said Doreen Gatewood, a victims' advocate for the White Mountain Apache Tribe.
Domestic violence charges face similar hurdles.
"You have a very close-knit community that's tied together by family or traditional means," said Darren Cruzan, deputy director of the BIA's Office of Justice Services and a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. "Everybody kind of knows everybody else." close knit community and desire to keep everything private and at home MY COMMENT
Martin, the Navajo prosecutor, holds out hope for a tribal prosecution in Kiara's case, saying evidentiary rules that differ under tribal law may provide an opening. "We can't let this one go," Martin said. "They may get a `not guilty,' but we're going to make our best effort to let the public know you can't kill your kid and get away with it."
Kiara has now been dead longer than she was alive. Martin knows she must act quickly. The tribe's three-year statute of limitations — the last chance to file charges — expires June 6. these rules reflect the desire for home rule and an understanding of the why behind the crimes and are so disparate from the evidence rules the federal courts have and the criminal sanctions involved there- my comment
___
Thanawala reported from San Francisco.
___
Felicia Fonseca can be reached at _http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_us/storytext/us_tribal_crime_justice/41686733/SIG=10ub4utl7/*http://twitter.com/FonsecaAP
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
kindred spirits ofthe heretic religion of the heart
In my recent viewing of the film Vision, which is an adaptation of the life story of the great female Christian mystic, Hildegard Von Bingen, I am remindedyet again of the importance of heretics in Christianity. Indeed, Christianity was founded by one of history's greatest heretics, and began as a spiritual revolution by a visionary. Throughout Christianity's history, there have been special visionaries who have continued the original flame of Christianity's founding, mystics who sought direct communion with Spirit, with God rather thanblind obedience to hierarchical religious structures of dogma -- and Hildegard Von Bingen was but one of them.
The Anabaptist wing of Christianity began as a heretic religion, and growing up inOhio in the Church of the Brethren, I was constantly reminded of the left-wing,conscientious-objector, progressive source of our founding. It's funny how progressive, visionary heretic sects evolve and begin to embody the very same qualities of hierarchy and structured dogmatic control that they originally rebelled against. I guess it's the metaphor of a young teenage boy rebelling against the controlling father, only to mature into manhood and becoming the same authoritarian father that he rebelled against.
But it isthis essence of rebelliousness and spiritual inquiry, of seeking directcommunion with God, that excited me and spurred me to be a heretic against myfamily and Church, to find out for myself what is spiritual truth from directexperience rather than from what is handed to me in religious propaganda. WhenI was 17, a friend at a Youth Conference at Manchester College triggered me tobegin asking questions like 'What is God?', and 'What's wrong with drugs andsex and nudity?' rather than just accepting what I was told. Thus I left myhome and my Church as I entered college and began my spiritual quest ofmysticism and seeking God in the many paths to enlightenment.
Aftermany years of exploring Quaker meeting houses, Zen Buddhist temples, Yogaclasses, Tai Chi, Rumi poetry, the Tao Te Ching, New Age Psychic Channeling,Reiki, Sufism and Islamic Mosques, I found myself on the West Coast living outof my backpack. I wandered around homeless with but pennies to my name and theuniverse providing daily miracles to support and prove to me that reality isimbued with consciousness.
The Anabaptist wing of Christianity began as a heretic religion, and growing up inOhio in the Church of the Brethren, I was constantly reminded of the left-wing,conscientious-objector, progressive source of our founding. It's funny how progressive, visionary heretic sects evolve and begin to embody the very same qualities of hierarchy and structured dogmatic control that they originally rebelled against. I guess it's the metaphor of a young teenage boy rebelling against the controlling father, only to mature into manhood and becoming the same authoritarian father that he rebelled against.
But it isthis essence of rebelliousness and spiritual inquiry, of seeking directcommunion with God, that excited me and spurred me to be a heretic against myfamily and Church, to find out for myself what is spiritual truth from directexperience rather than from what is handed to me in religious propaganda. WhenI was 17, a friend at a Youth Conference at Manchester College triggered me tobegin asking questions like 'What is God?', and 'What's wrong with drugs andsex and nudity?' rather than just accepting what I was told. Thus I left myhome and my Church as I entered college and began my spiritual quest ofmysticism and seeking God in the many paths to enlightenment.
Aftermany years of exploring Quaker meeting houses, Zen Buddhist temples, Yogaclasses, Tai Chi, Rumi poetry, the Tao Te Ching, New Age Psychic Channeling,Reiki, Sufism and Islamic Mosques, I found myself on the West Coast living outof my backpack. I wandered around homeless with but pennies to my name and theuniverse providing daily miracles to support and prove to me that reality isimbued with consciousness.
My questto find God, to find Enlightenment and to be guided by synchronicity, inspiredlargely by the Mayan shaman author, Martin Prechtel, found me one day in Juneof 2003 in Salt Lake City, Utah, having my first great mystical breakthroughexperience. Earlier that week, I'd been in Seattle and had discovered my newbest friend, Mira, on the sidewalks bumming for change. She'd just arrived inSeattle days before and had been sleeping underneath bushes, on a journey toheal herself of bulimia, seeking Ayahuasca as a means to heal herself of herbulimic curse. I'd never heard of Ayahuasca and had no idea what that was, butI told Mira that I would help her find Ayahuasca because I had faith in magicand miracles.
Dayslater, we were hitch-hiking through rural Idaho on our way to a RainbowGathering in Utah, and had been blessed with a string of really sweet ridesoffered by lovely and kind drivers, but had suddenly found ourselves on the sideof a highway for 50 minutes unable to lure anyone to stop for us. As I carriedthe gigantic pack on my back, weighed down by the exhausting weight and theheat from the sun, I began praying for help. I cried out for God to open theheart of some kind person on the highway. Moments later a driver pulled ontothe side of the highway, with Mira jumping up and down, her arms wavingexcitedly. We had found a ride!
Ourdriver explained his story. He was an ex-military man who had found a lucrativejob doing what he'd been trained to do in the military; working on helicopters.He would drive to some station on the west coast, work a week-long shift, andthen drive home to Salt Lake City, arrive in his furniture-less bachelor padhouse and take every psychedelic known to mankind for several days beforedriving back to work for another week-long shift. Right as we entered Utah, heasked Mira and I if we'd like to join him and do Ayahuasca that evening! Ourjaws dropped and hit the floor at the same time as we stared at each other inwide eyed disbelief! At that time, I was completely oblivious to the traditionof Amazonian Ayahuasca ceremonies and had never seen it, smelled it or tastedit before -- so I was totally wide eyed, innocent and said Yes. Mira wanted tojoin us but was terrified of finally having an opportunity to partake of theAyahuasca, plus she wanted to make it to a PsyTrance party out in the woods anhour away from Salt Lake City, so we dropped her off in the middle of nowhere,the contents of her backpack splayed out on the ground, with an enormous stormsystem approaching from the west and only a tiny bit of raw veggies to sustainher.
Dayslater, we were hitch-hiking through rural Idaho on our way to a RainbowGathering in Utah, and had been blessed with a string of really sweet ridesoffered by lovely and kind drivers, but had suddenly found ourselves on the sideof a highway for 50 minutes unable to lure anyone to stop for us. As I carriedthe gigantic pack on my back, weighed down by the exhausting weight and theheat from the sun, I began praying for help. I cried out for God to open theheart of some kind person on the highway. Moments later a driver pulled ontothe side of the highway, with Mira jumping up and down, her arms wavingexcitedly. We had found a ride!
Ourdriver explained his story. He was an ex-military man who had found a lucrativejob doing what he'd been trained to do in the military; working on helicopters.He would drive to some station on the west coast, work a week-long shift, andthen drive home to Salt Lake City, arrive in his furniture-less bachelor padhouse and take every psychedelic known to mankind for several days beforedriving back to work for another week-long shift. Right as we entered Utah, heasked Mira and I if we'd like to join him and do Ayahuasca that evening! Ourjaws dropped and hit the floor at the same time as we stared at each other inwide eyed disbelief! At that time, I was completely oblivious to the traditionof Amazonian Ayahuasca ceremonies and had never seen it, smelled it or tastedit before -- so I was totally wide eyed, innocent and said Yes. Mira wanted tojoin us but was terrified of finally having an opportunity to partake of theAyahuasca, plus she wanted to make it to a PsyTrance party out in the woods anhour away from Salt Lake City, so we dropped her off in the middle of nowhere,the contents of her backpack splayed out on the ground, with an enormous stormsystem approaching from the west and only a tiny bit of raw veggies to sustainher.
When Iarrived at my driver's house, we entered the kitchen and he opened up thecabinet, exposing shelves containing nearly every psychedelic drug known toman. He prepared the chacruna leaves and the Syrian rue pills and I prepared analtar of all my sacred items in the empty living room. When the bowls ofChacruna tea were ready, we downed it, and he sat down to watch movies and playvideo games - meanwhile I sat in the living room and began meditating andpraying to God. I had no idea what this would possibly do to me; I was apsychedelic baby.
It beganwith gorgeous fractal mandalas opening in the sky above me; a sensation movedthrough my body that felt like I was an empty vessel and God was being pouredinto me. I was reminded of my favorite Christian hymn, "Have Thine OwnWay, Lord", the lyrics of "Thou art the potter, I am the clay, mold me andmake me after thy will, as I am waiting, yielded and still." I felt thatstillness and yielding within me, opening to the heavens, experiencing my firsttrue mystic awakening of God pouring into me like a waterfall.
I beganweeping in bliss. I looked into a mirror and began watching all the faces fromall my past lives and past incarnations wash over me and I wept, and then arealization swept over me in its awe-inspiring totality -- that everything thatexists is the flesh of God. We are literally standing on God; this street isGod, this front porch is God, this sky is God, this lawn is God; everything isGod. The ecstasy of this realization prompted me to leave the house and beginwandering barefoot through the streets in pure awe of the divinity ofeverything surrounding me. I wandered for several blocks and found a manwaiting at a bus stop for a bus. As I approached him, his face was one ofcomplete and utter fear and revulsion -- his first words to me were "Areyou an Angel?" I explained that I wasn't an angel, I was just awakened bythe Light of God. I asked him why he was waiting for a bus, when he issurrounded by God, and that God is waiting for him. I sat with him for almostan hour as he poured his heart out and listened to him gush about hischallenges with his wife, their child, his job, everything. I sat there withhim and reminded him that God is everywhere and everything, and that God iswaiting for him to open his heart and receive. As I left, I felt as though I'djust experienced the most important experience of my entire life up to thatmoment.
It beganwith gorgeous fractal mandalas opening in the sky above me; a sensation movedthrough my body that felt like I was an empty vessel and God was being pouredinto me. I was reminded of my favorite Christian hymn, "Have Thine OwnWay, Lord", the lyrics of "Thou art the potter, I am the clay, mold me andmake me after thy will, as I am waiting, yielded and still." I felt thatstillness and yielding within me, opening to the heavens, experiencing my firsttrue mystic awakening of God pouring into me like a waterfall.
I beganweeping in bliss. I looked into a mirror and began watching all the faces fromall my past lives and past incarnations wash over me and I wept, and then arealization swept over me in its awe-inspiring totality -- that everything thatexists is the flesh of God. We are literally standing on God; this street isGod, this front porch is God, this sky is God, this lawn is God; everything isGod. The ecstasy of this realization prompted me to leave the house and beginwandering barefoot through the streets in pure awe of the divinity ofeverything surrounding me. I wandered for several blocks and found a manwaiting at a bus stop for a bus. As I approached him, his face was one ofcomplete and utter fear and revulsion -- his first words to me were "Areyou an Angel?" I explained that I wasn't an angel, I was just awakened bythe Light of God. I asked him why he was waiting for a bus, when he issurrounded by God, and that God is waiting for him. I sat with him for almostan hour as he poured his heart out and listened to him gush about hischallenges with his wife, their child, his job, everything. I sat there withhim and reminded him that God is everywhere and everything, and that God iswaiting for him to open his heart and receive. As I left, I felt as though I'djust experienced the most important experience of my entire life up to thatmoment.
I believethat every one of us needs to personally experience the transcendent presenceof God, of the Divine, in some way in one's life in order to truly know thatthere is a Divine hand at work in reality and in our lives, in order tocultivate a faith based on a real connection, rather than a blind faithenforced by some external belief system. And truly, every single one of usdeeply deserves to experience this relationship with what we could call "God"so that we may know in the depths of our Soul, our connection to the universalmystery that is much larger than any one religion.
It isthis concept that birthed initiations and vision quests in Native American andindigenous cultures, where the youth were put into situations where they had toopen up to the wider girth of awareness that reality can envelope when one isprayerfully in connection to this "holy spirit" wisdom emergent inreality. It is these kinds of direct experiences of the Divine, of God, thatinspired the Christian mystic, Hildegard Von Bingen. As a Benedictine nun, shesought to express her uncontrived and unconventional visionary experiences ofGod with others through song, through writings, through art, and through herbalmedicine. Despite her unconventional spiritual expressions, and especially asan empowered woman expressing an almost pagan facet of Christianity, she isstill revered for her spiritual wisdom as one of the greatest Christian mysticsin history.
It isthis concept that birthed initiations and vision quests in Native American andindigenous cultures, where the youth were put into situations where they had toopen up to the wider girth of awareness that reality can envelope when one isprayerfully in connection to this "holy spirit" wisdom emergent inreality. It is these kinds of direct experiences of the Divine, of God, thatinspired the Christian mystic, Hildegard Von Bingen. As a Benedictine nun, shesought to express her uncontrived and unconventional visionary experiences ofGod with others through song, through writings, through art, and through herbalmedicine. Despite her unconventional spiritual expressions, and especially asan empowered woman expressing an almost pagan facet of Christianity, she isstill revered for her spiritual wisdom as one of the greatest Christian mysticsin history.
I willnever understand why Christianity evolved in such a way as to make narrowlydefined belief systems and structures more important than the kind ofheart-centered, community-centric, Love and Forgiveness is the way to theKingdom of Heaven concepts that Jesus taught. It has always seemed to me to behistory's greatest irony that the most liberated, visionary mystic man whowalked the planet spurred the creation of the most dogmatic religion historyhas ever seen, due to the fact that it was co-opted by the Roman powers fortheir own selfish purposes of elitist control over their empire. The veryempire that Jesus spoke against took his cross and turned it into the mostauthoritarian, controlling religious empire in history. And it is this veryRoman Catholic empire that the Anabaptists were spurning a heretic religionagainst.
So I askyou, my fellow Brothers and Sisters of the Church of the Brethren, the GermanBaptists, the Mennonites, the Dunkards, the Amish; where is your inner heretic?Have you had a direct experience of God? Have you sought your own personalredemption, have you awakened your soul to your own divinity? Have you doneyour own deep work of transforming yourself from a programmed slave of ahierarchical system of oppression, have you found your liberation? If youhaven't, have you read the history of your own church? Do you know that theAnabaptists were started by rebels, in revolt against both the Roman CatholicChurch and Lutheranism? There is something I've always treasured and valuedabout the Anabaptist concept of choosing one's own baptism when one actuallyhas cultivated true faith and belief, coming to the faith from oneself ratherthan being baptized at birth because that's what everyone did.
I havelong admired the Anabaptists for living on the fringes of society, for theAmish living simply and traditionally, for the 'Salt of the Earth' people thatI grew up surrounded by -- the rural farming communities that I grew up aroundin Ohio. But, largely prompted by my mom, I also admired the women's liberationmovement and the history of women's empowerment in the church, such as thesuffragette movement that grew out of Quaker meeting houses in Philadelphia,and the empowerment of early German Baptist Brethren women like Sarah RighterMajor. Growing up in a congregation with two pastors -- a married couplesharing the reigns -- I grew up believing that progressive values were morallyright and questioned the accepted standards of society, and had to push theenvelope beyond what is traditionally accepted as true, by aligning more andmore with what morally feels right in my spirit, such as empowering women eventhough it broke conventions of traditional patriarchal religious institutions. In fact,when I went to a German Baptist church with my family near Covington Ohio, itfelt more oppressively male-centric and utterly patriarchal than any otherexperience in my entire life, even more so than my dabbling experiences withIslamic Mosques. This one experience helped give me a clearer understanding ofthe karmic lineage of my family than any other before or since; since that timeI have sought to completely extract all aspects of this harsh hard woodfloored, patriarchal, hierarchical, anti-dancing, anti-freedom, anti-sensualityreligion from my soul. And thus I have been a heretic ever since, essentiallyshunned in not so many words from my family and religion of birth.
I havehad to find a whole new family, a whole new community, a whole new spiritualityout here on the West Coast. We are a spiritual community of misfits, freaks,artists, hippies, musicians, mystics, massage therapists, tantrikas,psychonauts, devoid of the structured hierarchy and control that is endemic tospiritual communities that are structured around strict belief systems andchurches. We may all be self-obsessed fanatical new age weirdos, but we've allcome together based on common energetic patternings, lifestyles of freedom andcreativity, and have tried to find ways to be mutually supportive of each otherwhile living on the fringes of the mainstream society, outside of any dogma.
Ourspirituality seems to be self-created through our own process of awakening andliberation, and is something each of us has had to discover on our own viaparties, ceremonies, drugs, sexuality, our journey away from our Church ofbirth, and life. Sometimes it doesn't make any sense to me, sometimes I missthe support of a blood family, but most of the time I am just in awe of thestunningly gorgeous earth-centered community of freaks that I am surroundedby.
So I askyou, my fellow Brothers and Sisters of the Church of the Brethren, the GermanBaptists, the Mennonites, the Dunkards, the Amish; where is your inner heretic?Have you had a direct experience of God? Have you sought your own personalredemption, have you awakened your soul to your own divinity? Have you doneyour own deep work of transforming yourself from a programmed slave of ahierarchical system of oppression, have you found your liberation? If youhaven't, have you read the history of your own church? Do you know that theAnabaptists were started by rebels, in revolt against both the Roman CatholicChurch and Lutheranism? There is something I've always treasured and valuedabout the Anabaptist concept of choosing one's own baptism when one actuallyhas cultivated true faith and belief, coming to the faith from oneself ratherthan being baptized at birth because that's what everyone did.
I havelong admired the Anabaptists for living on the fringes of society, for theAmish living simply and traditionally, for the 'Salt of the Earth' people thatI grew up surrounded by -- the rural farming communities that I grew up aroundin Ohio. But, largely prompted by my mom, I also admired the women's liberationmovement and the history of women's empowerment in the church, such as thesuffragette movement that grew out of Quaker meeting houses in Philadelphia,and the empowerment of early German Baptist Brethren women like Sarah RighterMajor. Growing up in a congregation with two pastors -- a married couplesharing the reigns -- I grew up believing that progressive values were morallyright and questioned the accepted standards of society, and had to push theenvelope beyond what is traditionally accepted as true, by aligning more andmore with what morally feels right in my spirit, such as empowering women eventhough it broke conventions of traditional patriarchal religious institutions. In fact,when I went to a German Baptist church with my family near Covington Ohio, itfelt more oppressively male-centric and utterly patriarchal than any otherexperience in my entire life, even more so than my dabbling experiences withIslamic Mosques. This one experience helped give me a clearer understanding ofthe karmic lineage of my family than any other before or since; since that timeI have sought to completely extract all aspects of this harsh hard woodfloored, patriarchal, hierarchical, anti-dancing, anti-freedom, anti-sensualityreligion from my soul. And thus I have been a heretic ever since, essentiallyshunned in not so many words from my family and religion of birth.
I havehad to find a whole new family, a whole new community, a whole new spiritualityout here on the West Coast. We are a spiritual community of misfits, freaks,artists, hippies, musicians, mystics, massage therapists, tantrikas,psychonauts, devoid of the structured hierarchy and control that is endemic tospiritual communities that are structured around strict belief systems andchurches. We may all be self-obsessed fanatical new age weirdos, but we've allcome together based on common energetic patternings, lifestyles of freedom andcreativity, and have tried to find ways to be mutually supportive of each otherwhile living on the fringes of the mainstream society, outside of any dogma.
Ourspirituality seems to be self-created through our own process of awakening andliberation, and is something each of us has had to discover on our own viaparties, ceremonies, drugs, sexuality, our journey away from our Church ofbirth, and life. Sometimes it doesn't make any sense to me, sometimes I missthe support of a blood family, but most of the time I am just in awe of thestunningly gorgeous earth-centered community of freaks that I am surroundedby.
Butdespite this, I keep discovering new layers to the Anabaptist in my skin -- Ikeep finding new layers to peel away that reveal more and more an inherentquality of the heretic Christian mystic within myself. It is only just now thatI've realized that I was born in a counter-culture fringe religion, that I wasborn to never fit into mainstream society. I was born programmed to give amiddle finger to war, military, law enforcement and the global elite. I've longwondered why down deep in the root of my soul I just can't accept the socialconventions of this American society -- like buying cars, paying taxes, usingcredit cards, working a regular "job," shopping in malls, supportingthe endless wars, and I cannot seem to fit into it in any way, no matter howmuch I have tried and struggled.
It's beenan absolutely maddening and infinitely confusing schism within myself; to tryto fit into the mainstream and follow its program or give it a big middlefinger and follow my heart and live as a mystic rebel. But it's what myancestors have been doing for hundreds of years, living outside of themainstream society, struggling as conscientious objectors against every singlewar, refusing to wear anything but modest clothes, driving horses and buggies,living simply within their means, gardening and absolutely refusing to getintoxicated.
Afterseveral years as a total stoner, It has shown up as a need for sobriety andmental clarity, for a need for living simply, for a need to live in a spiritualcommunity of kindred spirits, for a need to participate in spiritual communityevents that bring us together to sing on a consistent basis, for a need to livein small towns connected to the Earth surrounded by gardens. The containerlooks very different than the gardens, churches, tractors, hymns, services andPassover bread of my ancestors, but in its actual day to day actualization, itoften feels like the next level of the same paradigm, simply a more modernfree-spirited version of a similar lifestyle. And I am grateful for the safecontainer I grew up in, but I will be forever dedicated to stripping away allthe layers of repression of joy, creativity and sensuality that were instilledin me as a child.
Thus I amalways seeking communion with my brothers and sisters, those kindred spirits ofthe heretic religion of the heart
It's beenan absolutely maddening and infinitely confusing schism within myself; to tryto fit into the mainstream and follow its program or give it a big middlefinger and follow my heart and live as a mystic rebel. But it's what myancestors have been doing for hundreds of years, living outside of themainstream society, struggling as conscientious objectors against every singlewar, refusing to wear anything but modest clothes, driving horses and buggies,living simply within their means, gardening and absolutely refusing to getintoxicated.
Afterseveral years as a total stoner, It has shown up as a need for sobriety andmental clarity, for a need for living simply, for a need to live in a spiritualcommunity of kindred spirits, for a need to participate in spiritual communityevents that bring us together to sing on a consistent basis, for a need to livein small towns connected to the Earth surrounded by gardens. The containerlooks very different than the gardens, churches, tractors, hymns, services andPassover bread of my ancestors, but in its actual day to day actualization, itoften feels like the next level of the same paradigm, simply a more modernfree-spirited version of a similar lifestyle. And I am grateful for the safecontainer I grew up in, but I will be forever dedicated to stripping away allthe layers of repression of joy, creativity and sensuality that were instilledin me as a child.
Thus I amalways seeking communion with my brothers and sisters, those kindred spirits ofthe heretic religion of the heart
awesome!
Submitted by Wahkeena Sitka Huva on Fri, 05/20/2011 - 14:33.
Yeah, Martin Prechtel is amazing and was very inspirational to me... 'Secrets of the Talking Jaguar' is the one I'd recommend most, but all 3 of his books are amazing. I love 'Stealing Benefacio's Roses' for the insane story he went through during the Guatemalan civil war.
http://vocal-alchemy.com/
Submitted by Wahkeena Sitka Huva on Fri, 05/20/2011 - 14:33.
Yeah, Martin Prechtel is amazing and was very inspirational to me... 'Secrets of the Talking Jaguar' is the one I'd recommend most, but all 3 of his books are amazing. I love 'Stealing Benefacio's Roses' for the insane story he went through during the Guatemalan civil war.
http://vocal-alchemy.com/
Indeed
Submitted by JahSun on Fri, 05/20/2011 - 08:05.
I concur totally with your idea of mystics as social heretics. Occasionally a social or religious order will adopt one as a role model or a saint, but only when the person is long gone... and their heretical ideas or actions are of no-immediate consequence or threat to the existing institutions.
Christians in general forget that the New Testament is not a book of moral rectitude as much as it is a promise. It clearly states that if you do certain well defined things, you will get certain well defined results. Namely, you will receive the Holy Spirit (without which one can not be considered a Christian). If one HAS the Holy Spirit, there are certain signs by which this can be known. One should be able to perform miracles, engage in prophesy, heal the sick, cast out demons, trod on serpents and scorpions... etc. etc. If you can not do any of these things, you have not the Holy Spirit... and by extension, you are not a member of Christ's flock. Period.
Yet, so few so-called Christians have the courage to actually pursue the divine directly. Instead they practice idolatry (most churches have statues of a dying Jesus), judgement on other people's lifestyles (judge not lest ye yourself be judged), collect firearms, and jump up and down when some "enemy" (no matter how wrong headed) is shot in the eye. There is no "love your enemies" and certainly no Pentecost type awakenings in modern Christianity.
Your ayahuasca experience is closer to what happened to the apostles on Pentecost than anything happening in any church anywhere at this time.
Keep pursuing that direct connection to divinity my brother... namaste.
Submitted by JahSun on Fri, 05/20/2011 - 08:05.
I concur totally with your idea of mystics as social heretics. Occasionally a social or religious order will adopt one as a role model or a saint, but only when the person is long gone... and their heretical ideas or actions are of no-immediate consequence or threat to the existing institutions.
Christians in general forget that the New Testament is not a book of moral rectitude as much as it is a promise. It clearly states that if you do certain well defined things, you will get certain well defined results. Namely, you will receive the Holy Spirit (without which one can not be considered a Christian). If one HAS the Holy Spirit, there are certain signs by which this can be known. One should be able to perform miracles, engage in prophesy, heal the sick, cast out demons, trod on serpents and scorpions... etc. etc. If you can not do any of these things, you have not the Holy Spirit... and by extension, you are not a member of Christ's flock. Period.
Yet, so few so-called Christians have the courage to actually pursue the divine directly. Instead they practice idolatry (most churches have statues of a dying Jesus), judgement on other people's lifestyles (judge not lest ye yourself be judged), collect firearms, and jump up and down when some "enemy" (no matter how wrong headed) is shot in the eye. There is no "love your enemies" and certainly no Pentecost type awakenings in modern Christianity.
Your ayahuasca experience is closer to what happened to the apostles on Pentecost than anything happening in any church anywhere at this time.
Keep pursuing that direct connection to divinity my brother... namaste.
The Cosmic Religious Feeling
Submitted by Zorro on Fri, 05/20/2011 - 11:51.
"...there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. (...)
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it. "
Albert Einstein
"The SACRED (whatever that means) is surely related (somehow) to the BEAUTIFUL (whatever that means)..."Gregory Bateson
Login or register t
Submitted by Zorro on Fri, 05/20/2011 - 11:51.
"...there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. (...)
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it. "
Albert Einstein
"The SACRED (whatever that means) is surely related (somehow) to the BEAUTIFUL (whatever that means)..."Gregory Bateson
Login or register t
“I've long wondered why down deep in the root of my soul I just can't accept the social conventions of this American society.” Because the aspect of this society you are rebelling against is the very culture devoid of questioning assumptions. But it sounds like you have connected with a legacy of American society that is the heritage of the Native Americans. I recently watched a wonderful series, “The Native American Experience” that demonstrated just how marvelous and radically autonomous Native American culture was. To the extent that when the great leader Tecumseh wanted to round up warriors to fight off the invading whites, he had to appeal to every individual warrior. A chief could not make the decision for anyone other than himself!
The Inward Light
Submitted by jeff on Sat, 05/21/2011 - 12:28.
Hello Wahkeena
Thank you for your inspiring article
I'm a Quaker and you definitely 'spoke to my condition.'
There is still so much that a Christian path can offer and I'm glad to hear you speak of this so eloquently. There is tremendous power, love, wisdom and compassion to be found and why let fundamentalists high jack it when it is available to all, right now, in this instant?
As you know, direct experience of God here and now without intermediary is the essence of the Quaker path.
Your article reminds me of the words of the twentieth century Quaker mystic Thomas Kelly written in 1941.
To you who are seekers, to you, young and old who have toiled all night and caught nothing, but who want to launch out into the deeps and let down your nets for a draught, I want to speak as simply, as tenderly, as clearly as I can. For God can be found. There is a last rock for your souls, a resting-place of absolute peace and joy and power and radiance and security. There is a Divine Center into which your life can slip, a new and absolute orientation in God, a Center where you live with Him and out of which you see all of life through new and radiant vision, tinged with new sorrows and pangs, new joys unspeakable and full of glory..
Thankyou again
Jeff :O)
Submitted by jeff on Sat, 05/21/2011 - 12:28.
Hello Wahkeena
Thank you for your inspiring article
I'm a Quaker and you definitely 'spoke to my condition.'
There is still so much that a Christian path can offer and I'm glad to hear you speak of this so eloquently. There is tremendous power, love, wisdom and compassion to be found and why let fundamentalists high jack it when it is available to all, right now, in this instant?
As you know, direct experience of God here and now without intermediary is the essence of the Quaker path.
Your article reminds me of the words of the twentieth century Quaker mystic Thomas Kelly written in 1941.
To you who are seekers, to you, young and old who have toiled all night and caught nothing, but who want to launch out into the deeps and let down your nets for a draught, I want to speak as simply, as tenderly, as clearly as I can. For God can be found. There is a last rock for your souls, a resting-place of absolute peace and joy and power and radiance and security. There is a Divine Center into which your life can slip, a new and absolute orientation in God, a Center where you live with Him and out of which you see all of life through new and radiant vision, tinged with new sorrows and pangs, new joys unspeakable and full of glory..
Thankyou again
Jeff :O)
drugs" are but one way, and definitely not invalid
Submitted by Wahkeena Sitka Huva on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 18:06.
In our culture, we are systematically taught to repress altered states of consciousness for they might lead to schizophrenia or insanity... However, that does not in any way negate using substances to attain the altered states of consciousness to expand the mind and open up to divine states of awareness. In fact, I am of the opinion, that there is no way possible to access the state of being that I entered into in this essay without the use of DMT. However, I have also chosen a drug-free / sober lifestyle the last 5 years, and have attempted to find ways to cultivate myself spiritually without any substances. Which is why systems of teaching such as QiGong, Kundalini Yoga, Tai Chi, and Meditation exist. These are all other vehicles or ways to connect in and open up to that same source; perhaps not quite so "hit you over the head" intensely... But it's all just working on different vibrational levels..... But definitely do not negate in any way your spiritual awakenings through drugs, just look deeper! xo
Submitted by Wahkeena Sitka Huva on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 18:06.
In our culture, we are systematically taught to repress altered states of consciousness for they might lead to schizophrenia or insanity... However, that does not in any way negate using substances to attain the altered states of consciousness to expand the mind and open up to divine states of awareness. In fact, I am of the opinion, that there is no way possible to access the state of being that I entered into in this essay without the use of DMT. However, I have also chosen a drug-free / sober lifestyle the last 5 years, and have attempted to find ways to cultivate myself spiritually without any substances. Which is why systems of teaching such as QiGong, Kundalini Yoga, Tai Chi, and Meditation exist. These are all other vehicles or ways to connect in and open up to that same source; perhaps not quite so "hit you over the head" intensely... But it's all just working on different vibrational levels..... But definitely do not negate in any way your spiritual awakenings through drugs, just look deeper! xo
___Quaker roots
Submitted by Inin-Soi on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 22:08.
Thanks for a great article. I found the writing style fresh and with the feeling of coming straight from the heart.
It helped put me in touch with the essence of my Quaker heritage for which I have a lot of gratitude although I live mainly in the world of indigenous shamanism these days.
The Austrian white magician and clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner said that the age of real Christianity has not even begun yet.
Food for thought
Submitted by Inin-Soi on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 22:08.
Thanks for a great article. I found the writing style fresh and with the feeling of coming straight from the heart.
It helped put me in touch with the essence of my Quaker heritage for which I have a lot of gratitude although I live mainly in the world of indigenous shamanism these days.
The Austrian white magician and clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner said that the age of real Christianity has not even begun yet.
Food for thought
__Localisation of the divine
Submitted by Paul_Kiritsis on Wed, 06/01/2011 - 09:42.
Greetings, Just read your article. Very interesting. I'm quite sure that "heretic" should probably be applied leaders of religious denominations that have deliberately monopolised spiritual revelation to garner secular power. The faction most guilty of this is the Roman Catholic Church which appropriated Biblical Scripture to the extent that it became a victim of the very "evil" it was attempting to subdue. How many people died in the Salem witch hunts? During the Middle Ages, many royals approached the Pope for advice regarding the murder of innocent civilians only to be told that "If it serves God it will be forgiven". Sadly, when philosophies and ideas pertaining to the nature of God are transposed to the most debased, literal level, they garner retrograde mentalities which preclude any consideration of human life as a wholly valuable, sacred and indispensible entity. The sacrifice of life for a defunct "truth" that is the biggest sin that humankind has committed since its coming to consciousness.
http://www.evolver.net/user/paul_kiritsis
Submitted by Paul_Kiritsis on Wed, 06/01/2011 - 09:42.
Greetings, Just read your article. Very interesting. I'm quite sure that "heretic" should probably be applied leaders of religious denominations that have deliberately monopolised spiritual revelation to garner secular power. The faction most guilty of this is the Roman Catholic Church which appropriated Biblical Scripture to the extent that it became a victim of the very "evil" it was attempting to subdue. How many people died in the Salem witch hunts? During the Middle Ages, many royals approached the Pope for advice regarding the murder of innocent civilians only to be told that "If it serves God it will be forgiven". Sadly, when philosophies and ideas pertaining to the nature of God are transposed to the most debased, literal level, they garner retrograde mentalities which preclude any consideration of human life as a wholly valuable, sacred and indispensible entity. The sacrifice of life for a defunct "truth" that is the biggest sin that humankind has committed since its coming to consciousness.
http://www.evolver.net/user/paul_kiritsis
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