The Pisces Sun is approaching two events that represent a point of balance, and the momentum shifting in a new direction. One is an opposition from the Virgo Moon on Thursday (the Virgo Full Moon), and the other is a conjunction to Chiron on Saturday (Sun conjunct Chiron).

Plan for a concentration of thought, effort and awareness around a certain set of plans, which may then seem to release to a new set of purposes on Thursday, and then go through a kind of clarifying process over the weekend. Here in the digital age, one thing we simply must get used to is constant revision. I am not advocating this. I would love for the pace of life to slow down a bit, and for there to be some organic opportunity to reassess.

But the ‘message of the medium’ of the digital age is how everything must be done and redone incessantly. If you’ve ever hosted a website, you know it’s never done; every time you turn around you have to take it apart and put it back together. That’s just a little puppet of what’s going on Internet-wide, with code being ripped apart and rewritten just about everywhere, all the time.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

The year began with Mercury retrograde in Aquarius. I have my ear to the ground, listening to my clients, my readers and everyone else I know — and this was one of the most challenging retrogrades I ever remember.

I’ve been tracking these things since before I was an astrologer, in the mid-1980s. This one just threw one curve after the next.

My concern is that with such a chaotic bout of astrology early in the year, you may have lost your focus on your most important New Year goals. You may not even recognize that this has happened.

When you’re addressing a crisis of some kind and you drop a goal or an idea, you don’t always know it. Then you might forget to pick up that goal again.

Do you remember what you were thinking two months ago on New Year’s, about what an awesome year 2015 would be? That’s all still true — if you remember, and if you go to work for your own cause.

I’ve got something that I am certain can help you. Whether you want to align with your plans and your goals, sort out your personal affairs or re-ground in your creative life, my 2015 annual reading offers just what you’re looking for — astrology so good you’ll feel like you discovered something amazing.

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Somehow the spaciousness I spoke of last week has managed to stick around for the most part. My breathing feels deeper, my energy feels clearer and my ability to create a narrative around my experience feels…well, somewhat blissfully difficult.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I was walking home the other day and tuned in to listen to any spark of inspiration that might be there for writing this week. My eyes instantly caught a crow carrying something. Before I could question the ‘sign’, several other crows flew past and my memory went to something that happened a few weeks ago.

It was early morning and I was walking around my favorite Seattle park. It’s a peninsula that juts out into Lake Washington, housing the only old-growth forest still left in the city as well as a jaw-dropping view of Mount Rainier when the weather is right (as it has been a lot lately).

The crows were particularly rambunctious that day, and they were harshing my mellow quite a bit with incessant cawing. I figured they were angry at an eagle or something, but you never know with crows. It’s often safe to take the narcissistic bent with them and assume it’s all about you, ‘cuz they sure do tend to vocalize when they’re unhappy with a human, and they sure do tend to be unhappy with humans a lot. There’s an entire blog dedicated to mapping blocks in Seattle it’s best not to walk down in order to avoid crow dive-bombing.

As the murder followed me around the park, there was one crow that was flying out over me and then back into the woods, with something in its mouth. Finally it flew out, from the top of an evergreen, and dropped the something right in front of me: a pinecone. It seemed too perfectly choreographed, and in the state I was in (read: very upset) I took it as a sign.

Ah, signs. My history as a diviner goes back quite a ways. In this life, I feel I’ve used the whole “universe please give me a sign” thing in such inappropriate ways that I often have a hard time discerning them at this point. There is a difference between “universe, please give me a sign that my father is with me” and “universe, if that ring is still in the store in one week I’ll take it as a sign that I should buy it.” I get that. I’m even starting to honor it, too! I’ve lessened the frequency with which I pull tarot cards, and the questions I’m asking are more focused and less mundane.

I suppose this is part of a larger process, that of reclaiming or learning how to hear my intuition. I have a lot of wounding around the theme of betrayal, which of course creates trust issues. At the core, however, is a deep fear of trusting the universe. More pressingly it’s a fear of trusting myself. That makes the intuition hard to access.

I’m aware that collectively speaking, the wound of separation is quite oozy at this point. Mythologically, the roots go back to separation from source or god or light or divinity — whatever language you want to use. The ripples of the wound, or the attempts to recreate the trauma so that we can heal it, are everywhere. Separation from the womb. Differentiation from the parent. Separation from intuition. From the earth, from our bodies, our lovers, our children…

I remember being shocked when I started piecing together the fact that when we die we seem to fragment or separate even more. Consciousness separates from the body. Perhaps a part of us stays Earth bound, while other parts go to the light or run around some bardo state. Or perhaps that’s all just linear logic trying to make sense of complex processes. And perhaps all of these processes are all happening at once in a sphere rather than a line, and so an adjustment to the narrative could just be “it’s all happening at once, and so everything is connected; we just separate to categorize and create language…”

These are all fascinating points to ponder and to work with. I suppose what’s interesting in light of the crow story is the act of rehabilitating that sense of connection. A crow drops a pinecone in front of me. What was I struggling with at the time? Clarity. Feeling like I didn’t know anything, like I couldn’t see straight, like I couldn’t figure anything out. What does a pinecone represent? Well, the third eye for one. Clarity. Sight.

I am aware and do believe that we live in an inherently connected world. Ensuring that that belief resonates with all parts of me — that the betrayed and distrustful pieces get the memo — appears to be lifelong, very worthy work. The glorious thing about choosing to accept the belief that the crow dropped the pinecone as a symbol for me means that I have something new to work with, in whatever way I choose, that has relevance for me. It also means I’m embracing an existence in an inherently connected cosmos, and there is so much healing in that.

By Sarah Taylor

Whether permanently, or temporarily, we have moved into a different space with this week’s three cards, all of which come from the major arcana — the 22 archetypes that mark The Fool’s, or Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s, Journey.

The probability of drawing three major arcana cards is, alone, worth noting, given that the major arcana comprises well under a third of the 78-card tarot deck (the rest consisting of 56 minor arcana cards). Statistically, therefore we have less than a one-in-three chance of a major showing up.

The Empress, The Star, The Moon from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

The tone of the message is clear: pay attention. Pay attention to how this reading might be showing up. And there’s a good reason to pay closer attention than usual: an all-majors reading can have a “behind-the-scenes” quality to it — as if you can feel that there’s definitely something going down but, like a roll of thunder, its origin and direction may not be entirely clear. Although the thunder itself is both heard and felt in your body.

That’s the key: a major arcana reading is happening at a soul level — or, if you will, at the level of the psyche. That there are no minor arcana cards to ‘pin’ it to a particular situation, event, or person doesn’t mean that it won’t be experienced in your day-to-day life. It’s just that, like thunder, it is more immediately accessible as something formless yet undeniably present. A felt sense, a surge of affect (“[T]he experience of feeling or emotion.“), an inner knowing that ‘shift happens’, a psychic (i.e. of the psyche) movement that isn’t directly attributable to a specific happening, but which colours the outside world with the hue of an emergence.

Your own becoming.

On the surface, the reading looks exclusively feminine, yet it is not — bearing in mind that all of us, no matter which gender we are, hold both the feminine and the masculine within us. Actually, while The Moon and The Empress are quintessentially feminine, the card at centre, The Star, is androgynous, even if the figure appears to be female. I know that Carl Röhrig, the creator of the deck, based some of his figures on well-known Hollywood faces; and The Star reminds me strongly of Julie Andrews in her Victor Victoria role, underpinning that idea of androgyny, or gender-switching. Aquarius (which The Star corresponds to) is nothing if not the free-thinker.

As a “free-thinker,” however, The Star as a card is more concerned with the mechanism behind that free-thinking than with the thoughts themselves. Let me explain. The card that comes before The Star in the major arcana is card XVI, The Tower, which symbolises the clearing away of what has been built or constructed and which no longer serves. The reason for this? To re-establish flow — not simply internally, but transpersonally: between you and the divine. The Tower clears away the blocks to the presence of a guiding light that is not of you, but wishes to move through you.

The Star is that flow. It is clarity; it is grace; it is inspiration; it is cosmic connection. Your thoughts are freed from the plaque of your distortions, your contractions, your self-reproach. When The Star is present, you are a “free-thinker” because your own wisdom is in alignment with a greater wisdom. This is not subjugation or brain-washing. It is the understanding that somewhere, somehow, you and it are one and the same.

How does this fit with the other two cards? I see a movement from one state to another, mediated by The Star and suggested by the direction in which the figure is looking, and what s/he looks away from.

The Moon is feminine, and also introverted. It is the card of the contemplative, someone who ‘tunes inward’ rather than ‘moves outward’. It is passive, in the same way that the Moon’s light is reflected from the Sun. That’s not to say that nothing is happening, but what is happening happens in the shadows. The Moon speaks of a time when things may feel unclear in the outer world, and so there is a drawing in and a feeling into the watery body of a world that lies beneath and beyond the five senses. The light of consciousness is temporarily, deliberately, obscured. Something at this time has asked to be retrieved from the depths.

The Moon seems to me to be the foundational card to this reading; something you have been in, and which you are currently moving away from. What you retrieved during your time sequestered in the shadowlands has enabled The Star to appear in this reading. If you look at the light on the top of the figure’s head in The Star, it is what was hidden behind the Moon. Now, it has come out, as if from an eclipse. (I am aware, writing this now, that there is a total solar eclipse later this month, on March 20.)

What you are moving towards is The Empress — another feminine card but, as you can see, the extrovert to The Moon’s introvert.

The Empress will not be ignored. She is life bursting into full-blood-bloom. She’s fluffing out her tail feathers, putting on her red lipstick, sweeping her copper hair into a moussed crown, and joining the party. I have a feeling she isn’t going to be easily ignored. And she means business. She is the inspiration from The Star, embodied and lived out. Her eyes are wide open, and she’s sizing the world up.

Or, is she sizing you up? Her raised-eyebrow expression feels like a feathered throwing down of the fur gauntlet: can you try her on for size? What would it feel like to be Empress for a day — or quite a few days? What would it feel like, not to wield your femininity like a mask, but wear it as an innate part of you — something that has emerged from your knowing and an inspiration that you may not quite be able to explain but, like that thunder, is impossible to ignore?

On one level, this reading is about the complexity of feminine identity in all of us, and the way the seas are shifting and revealing a new wave of the experience of her.

On another, though, it is about sensing that and understanding you have access to a wisdom that works through you, and stepping into this revelation as a state to be lived out. This isn’t hypothetical; it isn’t even simply psychological or emotional; it is physical, baby. Bring her through, bring her in — mediated by your own wisdom. Remember — no masks necessary. She, and you, were made for each other.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: The Empress (Venus), The Star (Aquarius), The Moon (Pisces)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

Note: This week’s sex-and-relationships post comes from Kristin Luce via elephant journal. You can read the previous article by Kristin that we featured, about the healing potential of deeply intimate sex, here. — Amanda P.

By Kristin Luce

Love Does Not Belong to Us.

Osborn* came to my free, drop-in groups for two years. He was utterly devoted to the truth which was a quality that we shared. Sometimes there were 15 of us, and sometimes it was just me and Osborn. He was utterly reliable.

Kristin Luce

And then—every few months—he would ask me out on a date.

The first time I turned him down we talked about it candidly; I said “no,” and he voiced his experience of feeling rejected. Paradoxically, we found a kind of intimacy in our disconnect, and it became the basis for even more in-depth work. He left that day saying, “I came in expecting surgery, instead I found love.”

My groups ended about two months before his death (though we didn’t know it at the time), and Osborn sent me this email:

“It really feels like everything has changed. One huge piece that’s missing is the self-judgment. I really can’t even find it when I look for it.

So, there’s this lightness now, and a sense of both openness and possibility. Bottom line, for me, is that I’m experiencing myself compassionately. I feel complete. Lesson learned. Left with gratitude. I wanted to offer a testimony to how effective your work is, and to say Thank You.”

A few weeks later he called me to say that he had been diagnosed with leukemia.

We both cried, and for the first time openly admitted to the intense intimacy we had in fact been sharing these past years. When I said “I love you,” it came out simply and sincerely. It was the truth. I had never told a client that I loved him, though I have fallen in love with every one of my clients over the years.

This turned out to be our last conversation. For those 20 minutes we met nakedly, the way people are meant to meet. He was child-like in his simplicity and straightforwardness, and I was touched by his beauty. It was a beauty that had always been there just beneath the surface, palpable but slightly obscured by his passions, fears and ambitions—all now moot in the face of his bleak future.

I regretted that I had ever hidden one inch of my love for him.

I suddenly knew in my bones that what I felt for him was the natural love that I have for everyone, and that everyone has for everyone else—whether we realize it or not. It was, in a sense, impersonal and yet it was also intensely personal. I loved him.

He died a few weeks later, but rather than feeling that he was gone it was more like he had come inside me even more deeply. He began to show up in my dreams, and I felt a bond that can only be compared to the special, profound and exclusive relationship that one has to a beloved.

Until the funeral.

Today, I sat with about 35 people, many of whom had known Osborn for decades. I was shocked as person after person stood up and spoke to the same intimate experience that I myself had been having with him over the past two years.

At one point a friend joked about Osborn’s famous fantasy. He had been on-line dating to the point that he actually decided to fly to Siberia to be joined with his new and seemingly perfect partner. His friend then asked the mourners, “So, how many people know that story?” and about three quarters of the room raised their hands, including me. Each one of us seemed aghast that he or she was not the only one privy to such knowledge.

Osborn had seemed solitary, but in fact he had been sharing his full depth and details with many others. These people knew him; his quirks, his lusts, his capriciousness, the ferocity of his devotion to the truth—and each was as surprised as the next to find out that they were not the only one. Osborn had been in bed—philosophically, mentally, and spiritually—with many others, while each of us had thought our unique bond was, well, unique.

Death rips a hole in the fabric of our consciousness and, as Leonard Cohen said, “that’s how the light gets in.”

I began to realize that of course everyone here loved Osborn, knew him, and maybe even felt like a secret consort or his best friend. I imagine that if his regular barista or bank teller had been there they might have felt similarly.

And I guess that whoever shows up to my funeral might feel the same way about me.

The truth is that we actually do touch, vulnerably, nakedly and completely, even as we pretend not to. It is especially revealed in two places: great love, and the gaping hole left in the fabric of reality torn open by death.

How could I possibly think that I was the only person who knew Osborn’s depth, heart, and humor? And moreover how could I want to be the only person to be privy to that? I don’t mean this intellectually, or that it would be”wrong” to want to be unique in that role. Rather, it simply doesn’t make sense to my soul. It would be like not wanting my children to have friends.

This great love, the vast kind, wants others to have everything, both more of me and of everyone else.

As I listened to people’s stories at the funeral I was delighted. He had had friends to cheer him on even as he threw golf clubs when he lost a game. He had touched the lives of children whom he mentored in chess classes. And yes, he had had an exquisite rendezvous with a woman in Siberia which I hope surpassed even his wildest fantasies.

Polyamory means “to love many.” Except for sex, Osborn was very much polyamorous. He shared himself with many people, and not just superficially. He was also loved by many, and not superficially.

What surprised me today was that I am polyamorous too—I just hadn’t known it before. I realized that I loved him far more deeply than I had thought, and sitting in that room with his ashes it seemed patently obvious that I loved a whole lot more people in my life just as deeply.

And what about sex?

When we think of polyamory, most of us think about multiple sexual partners. I found with Osborn that uncovering truth was our work together—it was simply not a sexual context—but that didn’t preclude there being an intense love between us.

I can only surmise that by fully opening to others the truth of those relationships will be revealed too, sexual or not.

Admitting to the love between us as humans opens the possibility that shared connection—whether it be intellectual, emotional, spiritual, sexual, or some combination of all of them—is actually just normal. And further, that we are not in control of the form that that connection will take.

The connection may be a sexual one—and it may arise with more than one person, much like I enjoy having a glass of wine and a good conversation with different people. So far, for me, it seems that I am polyamorous and monogamous, that is, loving many and being sexual with just one. But who knows what might happen? Love is endlessly mysterious.

What Osborn taught me was that our level of connection is not really up to us, that love does not belong to us.

We can block it at best and pretend, but that just denies reality, which is a stance that always costs us. He shared his whole heart with me, and I was delighted to discover that he had shared himself that fully with others as well. His openness raises the corollary question: why is it so threatening when our lover shares himself that fully with others? But that is a topic for another time.

In a way, my love for him wasn’t particularly special. It’s more that the actual love that we all have for one another, underneath the pretense of social roles, is always special. Humans can’t help but to love—at best we can only pretend not to. And then one has to ask: why would we ever want to do that?

* Note that the name has been changed for confidentiality, though to be honest I don’t think he would have minded.

———————-

Kristin Luce is slowly going sane by using her actual life and relationships to wake up. Her quest for truth has led her through a B.A. in Philosophy, an M.A. in Buddhist Psychology, intensive retreat practice, certification as a Meditation Instructor, two life-changing relationships and two life-changing kids. She now provides in-depth coaching for individuals and couples who want profound and dramatic transformation. An avid writer, she has been featured in such publications as Mothering Magazine and The Buddhadharma, and is a regular contributor to elephant journal. Friend her on Facebook, Twitter, her website or contact her at info@kristinluce.com.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I was sitting at my computer mid-morning, wearing three-layers, attempting warmth on a 10-degree day. More snow is due by Monday here in Missouri, and there was snow this week in Washington, D.C. as well. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, author of The Greatest Hoax: How The Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, scooped up a handful and tossed a snowball onto the Senate floor to ‘disprove’ reports that this is, overall, one of the warmest winters on record. Consider it theatrics of the mendacious kind. Inhofe will go down in history as a belligerent curmudgeon, if that kindly. I consider him a danger to global security.

Perhaps he should listen to the nation’s hands-down favorite Today Show weather man, Al Roker, who named the extreme temps this week due to climate change. Roker is about as mundane as a corn dog and a coke, so perhaps Inhofe should think twice about trying to twist the rubes’ tails with stunts, now that Willie Soon has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Soon, an aerospace engineer, climate truther advocate and part-time employee at the Smithsonian, has long been quoted on the right as an ‘expert’ on the topic of climate. He’s one of 58 such experts promoted by The Heartland Institute, the most influential of the climate truther think-tanks, frequently referenced on FOX News.

The Daily Beast vetted the 58 and found that only three have credentials that would entitle them to an informed opinion, noting that Greenpeace had recently discovered that Willie Soon is employed by the Charles G. Koch Foundation and other fossil-fuel advocates, to issue “deliverables”: scientific papers refuting climate change. The Beast also notes that one of the three actual atmospheric scientists took 40 percent of his funding from the industry, while the truther movement itself is entirely funded by big oil, resulting in “an avalanche of bullshit.”

Since not a single Republican validates global warming, I think we can assume that across the board, their bread is well buttered by petroleum. We should also be aware — as in loudly declarative and obnoxiously so, if required — that as a party they are LYING to the nation, for profit and on purpose. Isn’t that obvious enough now, to catch everyone’s attention? Isn’t that enough to begin to question their motives on who and what they represent? The question: Do they represent us, or only themselves?

Jon Stewart, feeling the pressure of exit count-down, has gone at FOX with real passion the last few days. His most recent hit was a challenge between FOX and The Daily Show in a ‘lie-off.’ He proved his point with an amazing little snip called “50 Fox News Lies in Six Seconds,” just a glimpse of what he’s spent much of his career exposing in recent years. And because these things are synchronous, this comes at a time when one of the more (strange but true) ‘moderate’ of the FOX commentators, bully-boy and ego-case Bill O’Reilly, has come under fire for embellishing the truth.

I suppose if O’Reilly hadn’t expressed so much faux-outrage about Brian Williams inserting himself into historical events, the spotlight wouldn’t have swung back so quickly to catch him up. As it is, however, no less than four previous statements of O’Reilly’s have come under scrutiny by those who were there. Despite what Bill has said, he did not see nuns shot in the head in San Salvador; protests in Buenos Aires, where he was reporting, were neither a ‘war zone’ during the Falklands war nor particularly dangerous; he was not outside the door of George de Mohrenschildt, friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, when he committed suicide; and he and his crew were never “attacked by protesters” during the Rodney King Los Angeles riots in 1992.

Should O’Reilly represent a rational world-view or any level of respected journalism, we could expect this kind of fiction to create a shit-storm, similar to Williams’s helicopter tale. Nothing on the right side of the spectrum requires supporting fact, however, so no surprise, ratings for The Factor have jumped in these last couple of days. Everybody wants to hear Bill’s bluster, belligerent in the manner of Limbaugh and every bit as much a shock-jock and provocateur. Everyone, it seems, wants to watch O’Reilly lie.

O’Reilly’s No Spin Zone — as accurately descriptive of his show as FOX News is fair and balanced — has won some viewers but has it won any respect? And does anyone actually care? The FOX brand stands behind O’Reilly as an entertainer, not a reporter. The nation should be able to examine that stance, compounded by the examples of outright lying and skewed reporting that Stewart offered, and determine that not very much presented on this news [sic] show is anything other than extremist propaganda.

Indeed, nobody is calling for O’Reilly’s head on a plate. They KNOW he’s outrageous and his rhetoric is slanted. They KNOW FOX News isn’t objective reporting. Most of us can say with certainty that very little FOX News has to say is more than right-wing clap-trap, designed to ensnare a morbidly paranoid right-wing base, but they still have a place at the table, they still show up for White House briefings, and we tolerate them in the name of “bipartisanship” or some such nonsense. Why can’t we connect those dots to condemn obvious flim-flam?

We should be very, very clear about this kind of statement when we hear it, and be quick to respond. Taking our sweet time has given the right the opportunity to move the football so far to the right that we’re all whistling Dixie. Every time we hear something that serves no one but the privileged, we should sing it to the heavens, tweeting and blogging, talking with friends and acquaintances, making it plain that with plans like these for the average citizen, right OR left, the conservatives “just aren’t that into you.”

Here’s more counter-intuitive flim-flam. The Republicans still want to privatize your Social Security, but don’t want oversight into the fraudulent banking that put the world on the edge of fiscal plummet. Sounds to me like they’re pushing the old folks to the edge of the herd while shoring up the one-tenth of one percent to which they all aspire. The question for your neighbor: “So you’re willing to allow your retirement funds to be gambled on the stock market?”

Every one of the Pub presidential wannabes have declared that they would void the Affordable Care Act without having a replacement. What’s being said, ultimately, is that showing up at hospital emergency rooms is good enough for the indigent, the uninsured, and the helpless, who would only thrive under preventative care, costing more to keep alive than they’re worth.  And didn’t God say he helps those who help themselves? (Actually that was Aesop, not the Bible, although three-quarters of those polled thought it came straight out of the Good Book. It’s been cited as a favorite quote of pick-pockets.)

Can we see how well this serves plutocracy? An underemployed nation, no longer expecting benefits, quickly becomes grateful for what it can get. Witness Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, the (deliberate) decline of the union movement and the rise of Right To Work legislation across the nation. From the point of view of the business class, workers should be grateful to have a job at all, let alone health care. Isn’t that what Republicans are actually saying? And isn’t that reminiscent of the default ‘death panel’ that Palin was sure the godless liberals wanted to foist upon her? The question for the neighbors: “Are you sure you can trust the insurance companies to cover you? Not to increase your rates? Are you sure you’ll keep your health care coverage if you change your job?”

Here’s a case in point. As I write this, the U.S. House of Representatives is preparing to punt on funding Homeland Security — their very own and very personal hedge against all things that go bump in the night — rather than allow Obama to go forward with his immigration plan. The message couldn’t BE any clearer! Are you of Latino heritage, citizen? The right-wing faction of the American political process is at war with your race. They are never going to allow you equality, so it’s in your best interests to not only ignore them, but to begin taking every opportunity to declare your independence from austerity and manipulation.

In Chicago this week, sitting-mayor Rahm Emanuel was forced into an election run-off — the first ever for a Chicago mayoral candidate — with Chuy Garcia, a Mexican-American immigrant who has come up through the populist ranks. A Democrat, Emanuel has always been controversial, not a politician to engender affection, and this time, in a city infamous for crony capitalism and corruption, his elitist connections and big money did not prevail. Garcia’s win against Emanuel’s thirty-million-dollar war chest can be rightly called extraordinary. The neighborhoods connected the dots in the Windy City, got out the vote, and shook the foundations of outworn tradition. Garcia faces a steep climb now, and deserves whatever support we can offer his campaign.

This is exactly the way it’s going to have to look all over this nation before we can say we understood the message of this new century, putting to rest the echoes of inequity reminiscent of the last one, and a radical religious streak that hasn’t been equaled since Cotton Mather pounded a pulpit. Before we can beat back the nameless fears that assail us, geld those who play us against one another, or put an end to the constant manipulation we’re exposed to, we’re going to have to recognize the face of radicalism when we see it.

ISIS is, on all accounts, a hybrid of the various terrorist movements of the last few decades, constructed from the DNA of every perceived outrage in the Mid-east, enhanced with the techno-talent of a hopeless generation, and fashioned over the bones of the unjustly dead. I agree with Obama that it should not get any props for being a legitimate part of Islam, or even a title used for an esteemed enemy. Each outrageous act of brutality is a plea for attention and legitimacy, like those of L’il Kim in North Korea, only infinitely worse because they don’t actually want response from the U.S. except in ordnance and warfare. They are a rogue end-times cult, marketing nihilism like snake oil medicine, bent on hastening the end of the world. Sound like anyone we know?

Here on our shores we have a radical religious movement wedded to a self-serving political party buoyed and supported by a for-profit corporate body that has turned this nation into a zombie eating its own brain. Bigotry and repression are not just tolerated in this mix but promoted. Black kids are seen as the enemy, gay persons must be turned ‘normal’ and women must not be allowed sexual freedom. To those who currently hold the good of the nation in their hands, government, medicine, education must all be leveraged for profit, quietly cutting the legs out from beneath America’s roots in democratic socialism.

And face it, those mindlessly pursuing profit are oblivious to the bottom line of this God-given mission: to kill off every progressive plan, liberal thought and public give-away until the Second Coming, which will arrive on the heels of a fiery conflagration in Israel. (And just so you know, it was a devious plot by noxious Hollywood liberals that American Sniper — the heroic story of a warrior living and dying by the scope of his rifle and his patriotic American values — did not win a deserved Oscar for Best Picture.) Yes, here in America we have some radicals of our own.

ISIS kills those who oppose it in as loud and dramatic a fashion as it can muster. Can we admit that the politics of this nation is slowly and quietly strangling its own, pushing policies that make us weaker and dumber? Meanwhile, the world awaits a rational American partner to rebuild and renew the planet. The question: who’s the radical, again? Who are the haters? Who are the lovers?

Now, take a deep breath. It’s a relief to face things clearly, and since we still have a good deal of illusion about what military-might can do for us in this country, we DO need to look very carefully. On the plus side, it’s not all bad news, here in the purge of darkness and Shift of Era. In fact, there have been a couple of big things to celebrate this week, things that give us the hope necessary to keep on keeping on.

The FCC has voted to support net neutrality, so remarkable a change in philosophy going foreword that long-time observers are stunned at the turn-around. This decision is akin to civil rights legislation, creating a level of equality upon which we can continue to build. Also, the XL Pipeline legislation was vetoed in the Oval Office — only the third veto of Obama’s presidency — but be aware, the pipeline itself is still in play, while the Republican proposal to approve it has been disposed of.

For American readers, there is activism needed to shore up these fragile successes. Our attention is still needed to make our desires known about these important breakthroughs. There is more to do. Next, the FCC needs to hear from us about the possible merger of Comcast and Time-Warner, in what we used to call ‘monopoly.’ Consumers Union will deliver your comments, here.

The Pipeline is still under consideration, and we need to continue advocating against it. For their part, the Republicans will try for a veto override next week, and we need to stay on top of that. Nine Senate Democrats and 28 House Democrats approved this legislation; check to make sure none of them were yours, or if they were, contact them with your view on this defeated legislation. Here’s the list from Daily Kos:

These are the 28 House Democrats who voted with Republicans last time: Terri Sewell (AL-07), Jim Costa (CA-16), Gwen Graham (FL-02), Patrick Murphy (FL-18), Sanford Bishop (GA-02), David Scott (GA-13), David Loebsack (IA-02), Dan Lipinski (IL-03), Cheri Bustos (IL-17), Cedric Richmond (LA-02), Tim Walz (MN-01), Colin Peterson (MN-07), Rick Nolan (MN-08), Brad Ashford (NE-02), Donald Norcross (NJ-01), Albio Sires (NJ-08), Sean Maloney (NY-18), Kurt Schrader (OR-05), Bob Brady (PA-01), Mike Doyle (PA-14), Jim Clyburn (SC-06), Jim Cooper (TN-05), Al Green (TX-09), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18), Henry Cuellar (TX-28), Gene Green (TX-29), Marc Veasey (TX-33) and Filemon Vela (TX-34)

These are the nine Senate Democrats and independents who voted with Republicans last time: Michael Bennet (CO), Tom Carper (DE), Joe Donnelly (IN), Claire McCaskill (MO), Jon Tester (MT), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Bob Casey (PA), Tom Mark Warner (VA), Joe Manchin (WV)

Contact your legislator here by scrolling down to Elected Official and picking your poison.

Rather than become overwhelmed by all that needs doing, let’s remember that the dregs must rise from the bottom before the glass can fill with clear water. It may feel as though we’ve talked and talked and yelled and yelled, argued and objected and made ourselves a target at family dinners and city meetings. It may feel as though we’re worn down to a nubbin, speaking truth to power as we might, but — oh, my dears — we’ve only just begun.

One more time, dearhearts, into the breach. The stars have moved us closer to awareness, our circumstances opening opportunity from moment to moment, and we must use what’s at hand to lift ourselves and others into something other than disabling, nihilistic end-times rhetoric. We owe one another activism in service to healing the planet and her wounds. We owe one another the loving attention that is at the heart of decent leadership and common good. The least we can do is ask the questions, tell the truth and expect the best of, and for, one another.

If you need to hear someone speak truth to power this week, go here to listen to California fire-breather Barbara Boxer give the Pubs a piece of her mind over the Homeland Security smack-down. She makes their actual intent very clear, and if your neighbor still isn’t listening, send this YouTube. They may hear something that sounds — oh so very — familiar. Do not underestimate the shifting currents that can make us suddenly visible to ourselves, the energies of change that urge us to remain teachable.

Let me put it another way. Nothing we — any of us — ever did entirely for our own good, with thought to no other, served the world around us or improved life on the planet. Is that who we want to be, who we want to elect and what we want to become? Impoverished in plenty? Heartless in power? Culturally mindless and spiritually hopeless?

No? I didn’t think so. A Course in Miracles tells us that the goal is not to achieve a perfect world, but to heal our perception enough to experience the one we’re in as a ‘happy dream.’ That’s the work. One more time, then, find the good; bless the righteous; act to counter, without judgment, the unkind and selfish; and serve the Light.