By Amanda Moreno

It is so hard for me to write when I’m not inspired. It’s nearly impossible. My writing process very much has to do with being in the flow and with tapping into that feeling of being able to channel words as poetry. Regardless of whether I’m doing academic writing, prose, poetry or this column — which tends to be a mix of any of those — the flow is so important. Fortunately, I tend to be easily inspired.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I’ve been out of the flow, and out of inspiration, for a spell now. It’s a theme I’m noticing among friends and clients as well. Things feel flat, dull, surreal, nebulous.

I’ve been able to push through it for the most part, as I tend to keep a notepad on me and jot down ideas throughout the week. There is typically something that ends up being viable if I can’t just pop into writing mode and spontaneously see what comes out. And I won’t lie, popping into writing mode tends to involve a Manhattan. Or a margarita.

This week I have waited until the last minute to write. I consulted the Planet Waves main page to see if I could find some inspiration — and I did! I love using my tools. It came in the form of Len’s piece, which encouraged the ‘walking away from it’ technique.

I’ve done that several times now to no avail. I was several paragraphs into a piece about cathartic regression therapy, but had to ditch it. Usually I can just push through it and hang in there.

I’ve been writing this column on a weekly basis for almost a year. I’ve missed 3 or 4 weeks, but still, it’s become a process I value deeply. It keeps me on my toes, challenges me to keep paying attention, and adds a much-needed bit of discipline to my life.

It’s been far more personal than I intended it to be. Sometimes sharing at that level has felt incredible and sometimes it’s felt impossible. Sometimes that impossibility turns out more objective, non-personal pieces. All I know is, I have never felt as stuck as I do right now.

I have also been encountering a theme again and again, and I’m still working with it. I’ve realized that parts of me are afraid of the power of words. I’m in a super-conscious phase when it comes to what I put out into the universe in words, and as I work through what is underneath that fear, the inertia I feel is compounded.

This column is supposed to be about ‘spirituality’. That gives it a bit of focus, but when it comes down to it, part of the struggle for me each week is choosing a topic. The scope is broad, and although I try to keep it somehow rooted in current events and trends, sometimes I dream of having someone else narrow down the options for me.

So! The purpose of this current post is to open it up to you, dear Planet Waves community. What would you like to see being covered in this space? Are there topics I’ve covered that you would be interested in hearing more about? Are there ‘spiritual’ topics I haven’t covered that are on your mind? Do you have other insight it feels appropriate to share?

As always, thanks for tuning in.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I did the unthinkable this week. I watched FOX News for most of a half hour. I have an internal fail safe mechanism that makes it difficult for me to watch people embarrass themselves. I’ve been known to run from a room, hands over my ears, singing LA LA LA at the top of my lungs. Consider how perilous my lot these days, now that there are no fewer than 15 Republican presidential contenders — potentially five on the left — with even the most sound of mind seemingly able to trip over their own hypocrisy in a heartbeat, blithely unaware that they’ve exposed their inner doofus to media, worldwide.

Need examples? Scott Walker can’t figure out why his “lovely thing” ultrasound commentary was so offensive to lefties and/or women after having signed a bill into law mandating an unnecessary ultrasound for those wishing to exercise their Constitutional right to abortion. And of course there’s that issue with the Republican sense of humor, requiring some porion of ‘inner Mean Girl’ to tickle their funny bone.

Earlier in the year, Huckabee dipped down into murky imagination to make a transgender joke (about embracing his feminine side so he could shower on the girls side of the gym) that rightfully earned him the scrutiny usually reserved for wonky old Uncle Bertie who wants all the nubile young nieces to sit on his lap at Thanksgiving.

And did I mention a lack of compassion? Ted Cruz thought that making grief-stricken Joe Biden the butt of a political joke on the same day his son was laid to rest was somehow not just acceptable, but unworthy of apology until cyber-culture smacked him on the snout with a rolled up newspaper. And oh yeah, newly announced Lindsey Graham insists he isn’t gay.

Yes, it’s difficult to avoid the gaffes and foibles of potential presidents, a listing of which Mother Jones contributor, Kevin Drum, scrutinized in his blog post, “Why Do So Many Obvious Losers Think They Can Be President?” Drum came to no conclusion, nor did I, rethinking what we know of each of them. All I can say for sure is that my laugh lines are being replaced by wince lines, and there’s more than a year to go.

It’s as if these Oval Office wannabes are hooked on their own selfies, narcissists close to the skin, sure beyond doubt that the nation is with them despite credible and growing evidence that the whole country is quickly shifting left (and surely in defense of continuing the corporatocracy these candidates represent). Life would be easier, no doubt, if they’d stop pretending there is only One Way and it’s theirs. Evangelicals, too.

I didn’t tune in to FOX looking for random content. I wanted to see how the Duggar’s handled themselves as Megyn Fox, one of the stable of blondes at Fox, put the questions to them about the year in which four of their daughters (and a baby sitter) were “touched inappropriately” by their young teen son.

Here’s my disclaimer: I follow these folks via print, I was never a viewer. Gag-reflex, embarrassment quotient, yadda. Couldn’t watch Honey Boo Boo either. Still, with all the news of (Number One Son and until recently, Family Research Council lobbyist and Christian values advocate to the Supreme Court Gay Marriage case) Josh Duggar’s early incidents of fondling, I wanted a peek at just how thick this wall of resistance to 21st century social norms might be.

In Fe’s “Old Ghosts Coming Back” earlier this week, which followed an earlier piece on the Duggar family and the radical principals behind the Quiverful movement, we got a look at retired Speaker of the House Denny Hastert and allegations of a sexual crime that was still shadowed in mystery. Allegedly, he molested a young man who died mid-90s from AIDS. His sister contacted the media shortly afterward, but the allegation could not be proven and never grew legs.

The incident that occurred in the 70s would today be punishable by mandatory prison time of approximately 15 years. Also, the crime itself is seldom a solitary event, as these kinds of predators don’t just quit cold. I suppose we could make a case for screwing the larger public as substitute for more personal contact, but it’s not likely. There’s a whole lot of “there” there, but we’ll probably never get to it.

And there’s a whole lot of “there” there with the Duggar’s, as well. I was mouth-breathing through most of the interview, which turned out to be sloppily sympathetic to Michelle and Jim-Bob, giving them opportunity to present a united defensive front, wounded that this problem has been resurrected to victimize them, outraged that the police illegally (not) allowed the facts to spill out, sprinkled with the inevitable grammatical misuse (all right, that was snotty, but still …).

I wasn’t surprised that Michelle spoke with a wispy little girl voice and offered the least comment, breaking down in tears at one point when discussing their ‘failure as parents.’ I wasn’t surprised that they handled the problem “in house,” and then sought help from a Christian group (strike that, make it a ‘friend’ who had experience with such things) to straighten their son out, nor that they’d reported the problem (over a year later) to an Arkansas State Trooper (who is now serving a 56-year prison sentence for child porn). It happened. Who the hell could make that up?

And I wasn’t shocked that they worked the viewer for sympathy with tales of how their serial-fondler son cried each time he confessed, repentant and contrite, for repeating this ‘mistake’ several times. There was more, so much more, but worst of all, I wasn’t surprised that it took a full twenty minutes of airtime to get to the topic of the victims: the girls, what had been done for them at the time, and now. They were the ‘throw away’ of this piece, the last thing the Duggars were worried about — evidently then, as now.

According to the parents, the girls were oblivious at the time and are only now being victimized by all this unwanted attention (because the Duggars themselves never contracted to take their daily lives to the street and invite us all into their sexually obsessive/repressive lifestyle? Right? What? Huh?).

It didn’t take long for the tweets to fly about this interview. Response was immediate. The person who nailed it, though, was not one I’d have supposed would. Montel Williams, reduced to infomercial-schlepping now that Sylvia Browne is gone, put out the most accurate assessment in a series of comments, I thought, beginning with his empathy for their situation but blasting them for their denial of a serious problem within their household:

“There is something very sinister beneath the surface – these are people who basically said they thought they could be as preachy as they wanted because the records were sealed, these are people who seemingly minimize what happened in their home and essentially sent a message to their daughters to smile, nod and forgive, it’s eerily reminiscent of the ‘keep sweet’ mantra in Warren Jeffs’ FLDS. Nothing about these people is real. Nothing about these people isn’t hypocritical.”

For those of us in the reality community, I don’t think it’s difficult to imagine that a child raised in a pressure cooker of sexual repression coupled with the exaggerated (and over-crowded) result of sexual excess — home-schooled, constantly monitored and taught that immodesty is ungodly — would find a way to express his erupting sexuality by examining the only things at hand, scads of little sisters. But that’s not the ‘there’ there.

We talked last week of excess, and here it is again. Religious extremism in excess. What’s at the crux of this is the notion that lives need micro-management by patriarchal authoritarians who demand compliance in exchange for eternal life. The Dugger problem, besides averaging a pregnancy every fifteen months for the last 21 years? An extreme brand of God-authority they have made their life-commitment, defining their inability to be honest with themselves and contributing to their children’s neurosis. And what’s their reward? The fear level in this pair is palpable.

So much damage is done in the name of religion. Not content to remain simply a highly watched reality show, the Duggars have become politicized over the years, specifically against all manner of gay issues. Michelle Duggar recorded a robocall to voters in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in which she protested a local anti-discrimination ordinance. In it, she linked transgender people to child predators. Her son, the former fondler, represented his family’s deeply anti-LGBT point of view with any number of prominent Republican politicians, who curried the base by having their photo taken with him. On days like today, when those pictures might as well show horns on Josh’s rounded skull, I suspect powerbrokers on the right would rather not be reminded — but let’s go there anyway!

Politicized religion is how we got in this mess to start with. Reagan’s idealized vision of a “shining city on a hill” was taken straight out of the Bible, seized upon by Jerry Falwell and trumpeted from the ambitious new Christian Broadcasting Network as a 24/7 offering on cable television. The erosion of separate church and state had begun. Eric’s reference to Orwell this week is apt on many levels, with this example of mind control another tentacle.

Even as polls show the nation becoming quickly less religious, the political policy that drives her has been breached by the organized activism of fundamental Christianity. In her piece entitled “At Home With The American Taliban,” Fe finished with a paragraph about the Duggar theology that included this sentence: “They will not hesitate to impose their world view and morality onto the rest of us.” I’ll give that a hearty AMEN!

But how do we break through that heavily-walled box of old paradigm rhetoric? We poke it with a sharp stick.

Larry Wilmore, the black comedian whose “Nightly Show” took Stephen Colbert’s time slot following Jon Stewart, is an accomplished, politically astute entertainer. Those of us who questioned his ability to carry a half-hour on Comedy Central have been more than pleasantly surprised. His programming is race-centric — needed since Dave Chappelle wandered away — but not heavy handed; it is topical and candid as well as appropriately irreverent.

We hear a lot about how the black population, deeply and traditionally religious, remains a homophobic demographic, but you wouldn’t know that by either Wilmore’s attitude or those of his (predominantly African-American) guests. His support for the LGBT community and acceptance of transgender issues have not waivered. He did a piece on the unfunny Huckabee joke, resurrected to coincide with Caitlyn Jenner’s outing, that rivals a Jon Stewart bit. As a YouTube, it should be passed around before Huck gets on the Top Ten list. Please do.

Last evening Wilmore did a bit on graduation, taking on news of a family being arrested (WTF!) for shouting out their high school graduate’s name as she went up to the podium. Black, naturally. Then he moved on to the banning of high school valedictorian Evan Young, who had been poised to come out as gay. The young man’s witty speech was frowned upon by educators who were looking for a more traditional message, and although Evan agreed to allow his presentation to be heavily edited by the school administration, his insistence on proclaiming his sexual identity — the whole point, he said — was the deal breaker. Evan’s Colorado Charter School principal informed his parents of the school’s decision by outing Evan to his Mom and Dad.

Evan is not only very bright, he’s cute as a bug and has had a level of support that’s turned the whole topic of ‘gay acceptance’ on its head. Colorado Congressman Jared Polis, himself a gay parent, has called for an investigation into the incident, and an examination of the attitude of these educators. It would be useful if they would heed stories like that of the Duggar family about what happens when we seek to be repressively authoritarian with our children.

Larry Wilmore invited Evan to give his speech on air. Whatever the intent of the Charter School personnel that forbade Evan an audience, the world at large was ready for the message and heard it loud and clear. I hope you’re able to watch it. It’s a message of hope and love that the Duggars can’t — perhaps won’t — hear, through their fears and tears and self-pity.

If you can’t open the link to hear Evan, then [spoiler alert!] here’s the crux of it, from the undestructable spirit of a youngster in Colorado who gets it. As we’ve discussed today, there are a lot of people out there who don’t have a clue, but here’s the Litmus test: the difference between the Duggar message and that of Evan Young is the difference between night and day.

If there’s one thing I learned at this school, it’s that we can still be friends even if we profoundly disagree with each other. And sure: There’s only like 30 of us, so it’s not like we had much of a choice, but at times, it took a serious effort to put up with one another. We disagreed and argued about many things: about gun control, the minimum wage, politics, books, movies, who would speak at our graduation, pretty much everything else.

But no matter how much we disagreed, we learned to overlook our differences and respect everyone else, no matter how wrong we thought they were, no matter how annoying they were, no matter how boring their speeches were, or no matter what weird snacks they brought to history class, from coffee creamer to coconuts. And I want everyone here to do the same.

So before you leave, I have one final request for you: Hug someone. That’s right, hug someone. Students, hug a teacher. Democrats, hug a Republican. People who own a gun, hug one of those darn liberals who wants to snatch it out of your cold, dead fingers. Trekkies, hug someone who likes Star Wars more. Mel Gibson, hug a Jewish person. Conservative Christians, hug an agnostic. Hug a gay person while you’re at it, too. (Actually, please don’t because I don’t want to hug everyone here, but you get the point).

Feel it? Got it? I knew you would. Love comes with an open heart and an explosion of joy and acceptance, not with a burden of guilt, remorse and judgment. Now THAT’s a message worthy of a big ol’ AMEN and one to pass around to everyone who needs to lighten up!

The Moon is in comparatively sober Capricorn today, waning after its Full Moon peak in stimulating Sagittarius a few days ago. Mercury is in its slowest retrograde of the year back through Gemini. Venus is climbing through its last day in Cancer. Another season is winding up towards its last fortnight. Things just might feel a bit heavy for you right now.

Much like love and passion, however, astrology indicates that motivation and support to at least lighten your load are likely to be found if you bother going halfway to meet and find other people and experiment with other aspirations.

Earlier today, Amanda Painter covered the love and passion angle admirably. In her treatise regarding the trine from Venus to Saturn, Amanda cogently noted how a little discipline can go a long way to channel passion, manifest talent and define love.

Sometimes, however, it may feel as though the tank of devotion that fuels your discipline has simply run dry. Now might be one of those times. Your mind may not be able to keep up with all there is to think about. Your emotions might have recently been wrung out. Your labors of love could seem lost. Even the fuse lit by the vernal equinox in March has very possibly now been spent.

If there is anything to astrology, however, this time need not be a nadir for you or anybody. The amplification of ambition is available if you reach forward to experiment with achieving (or at least seeing) something outside of where your endeavors have recently been focused and possibly frustrated.

If jogging seems like a drag lately, borrow a helmet and a bike to see what a dose of wheels will do for your feet and legs. Should one field of work be getting old, look into another. It won’t hurt to look. In the event that you have bitten off more than you can chew, consider spitting it out to take a smaller bite. If nothing else, just take a break away from what has turned into a chore so that you can appreciate your work from a new perspective — like a painter stepping back from a mural.

Reaching back might be even more productive than reaching forward. Something you burned out on long ago (perhaps stowed away in your closet, attic, garage or basement) might burn more brightly now if you reach in, get it out and dust it off. A live wire could be made by simply plugging back into group endeavors from which you once withdrew, no matter how good the reason at the time.

Finally, reaching out to others would seem to very possibly find empathy if not common aspirations at this time. For there is balance to be found in the astrology. The Sun and Mars are advancing through Gemini as surely as Mercury is retreating. Venus still waxes even as the Moon wanes. Jupiter is as direct as Saturn is retrograde. You just might find that balance manifesting on Earth if you bother meeting other people halfway at any opportunity, in any sense of the term. 

So mix it up a little bit. Explore new passions. Seek out new ways to stimulate your consciousness. Offer so as to receive — even if it’s one small thing at a time. Before you know it, motivation could be renewed, support might be refreshed, and life may not seem so heavy, if you bother.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.