BRIDGET BISHOP ~ On June 10 in the year 1692, a woman named Bridget Bishop was hanged on Gallows Hill in Salem, Massachusetts, after being found guilty of the crime of Witchcraft. She was the first person to be publicly executed in the infamous Salem Witch Trials. Accused, tried, and executed for being a witch, Bishop was known to enjoy a drink or two, operated two taverns in town, and enjoyed the game of shuffleboard. She had been widowed twice.
She was bold, outspoken, independent, self-supporting, and liked to wear fine clothes (notably, a “red paragon bodice bordered and looped with different colors” and lace). She was said to have a sharp tongue. Bishop didn’t fit into her society’s notions of how a “good” woman should behave and her neighbors feared and resented her as a result. Though Bishop was the first to be executed in Salem, she was not the last. Take a moment today to remember her, and celebrate the differences you see around you instead of fearing them. – GrannyMoon
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. ~ Mark Twain
My favorite thing about wrinkles (yes, you can have a favorite thing about wrinkles!) is that they can be a gauge for happiness. The more lines around the mouth, the more I’ve laughed; and the more crow’s feet around my eyes, the more I’ve smiled. Despite what TV, magazines, and popular culture tell us, wrinkles are a natural, beautiful, normal part of our expressive faces. They are only flaws if we let them be, if that is our perspective. This is true of many physical flaws that we women are taught to buy into.
Today’s Action
Think of a few (two or three) of your physical “flaws” and write them down. If your wrinkles are a gauge of joy, what positives do your other “flaws” represent? For example, stretch marks might represent the birth of a beloved child or a new muscle. Next to each “flaw”, write something positive that it represents. Notice how each one helps you gain new perspective.
Why is it acceptable to ask for criticism, yet not alright to ask for compliment? We’ve been ‘trained’ to seek the negative … in self, in others, in situations.
Self-trust.
Self-esteem.
There’s always someone to help us in this regard, to the positive, or to the contrary.
When we fully take responsibility for our actions, stop blaming our attitudes and character on past experiences, then we can claim our life.
We can choose the practices we wish to embody. If others are not okay with any of it, let them be. Honor yourself in the moment, every one of them.
If experience brings tough lessons, embrace them as thoroughly as possible to decrease the chances of a lesson needing to be relearned.
Recognize.
Accept,
Or release.
Once you are okay with every little quirk and habit, the rest doesn’t really matter, as long as no harm is coming to self, or any body.
“No single No one possesses the complete range of faculties. through social union, human beings complete one another, and mutually secure their well-being. Because they need one another, they have been created for living in society and not in isolation.” ~ The Spirits’ Book
Take a good long and hard look at what the so-called leaders are pushing for … I do not speak of the president, but those who fight against him.
Covid-19 came along after a three year attempt to impeach the president. The democrats, indeed, the whole advisory committee, pushed for isolation, and the covering of the mouth, signifying compliance, silence.
They sold fear, ripe and ready to eat, while this president tried to give the cure (hydroxychloroquine) which has even been proven to fight cancer … two for one. But what did the majority of Americans do? They swallowed the lies and rejected the cure … they allowed fear, hatred, and false reporting to take from them what they’ve been wanting and waiting for.
The government, previous to this one, steered jobs away from the American citizens, gifting the citizenry profit loss and opportunity loss for their own well-being.
People need to rise together, for anything other than that is ensuring our own demise.
PS – Joe Biden will be taken out of the race by his own team. Whomever they replace him with will be the true devil, or someone puppeted by him (them, since it is a group thing).
The vote will be for freedom …
… or for more of the same we got before this administration, a true slavery symbolized by the mask and stay at home orders.
More human trafficking, more missing people, more murder as they push to eliminate the protectors of the law, and release serious criminals from prisons.
Don’t let your hatred for one man cause you to throw in the towel on your country.
Regardless of the threats …
Threats that make the most hardened warrior crumble and apologize for supporting the president.
The war is real.
And it is bigger than any one man.
My hope is there will be enough Americans and others in this world to support and bring us into the light.
Pray.
Meditate.
Sing.
Dance.
Whatever you need to do to raise your vibe into one of appreciation and love, do it.
Nature works every time.
There WILL be a one world order.
It will come in the form of slavery, or freedom.
Choice is ours.
It will come from a place of fear, hatred, or good thought processing.
It is important to rule the emotions, and not be ruled BY them.
The enemy uses emotion against us … ALL of us, in various methods.
Matthew 4:16 ~ The people who are seated in darkness saw a great light, and to those seated in the region of shadow and death, a light sparkled.
2 Corinthians 4:6 ~ For God, who said: Out of the darkness shine the light!, it was himself that shone in our hearts, to make the knowledge of God’s glory shine, the knowledge that glows on the face of Christ.
Acts 26:23 ~ [Being] the Christ who suffered and the first to rise from the dead, he should announce the light both to the people and to the nations.
Make a commitment to learn something new. Have you always wanted to knit, roller skate, skydive, or play an instrument? Try it! Be a beginner and see what calls to you.
One of the secrets to staying young is to always do things you don’t know how to do, to keep learning. ~ Ruth Reichl
Sometimes we stop ourselves from doing new things because we want to do it “right” right away. We’re not willing to be messy or clumsy, or to make mistakes. But trying to always do things right can make us rigid, and never trying something new can keep us isolated in our old routines.
Imagine yourself looking at the world with a beginners mind, and being willing to try new things. This means you are also willing to be messy, clumsy, and imperfect. That’s what beginners do.
I could not lie anymore, so I started to call my dog, “God.” First he looked confused, then he started smiling, then he even danced. I kept at it: now he doesn’t even bite. I am wondering if this might work on people?
The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. ~ Anna Quindlen
Many of us hold an image in our minds of who we think we should be, and we constantly compare ourselves to this imaginary version of ourselves. Anytime we fall short of this standard by not being pretty enough, successful enough, smart enough, or fill-in-the-blank enough, we judge ourselves harshly.
The truth of the matter is that we will always fall short of perfection when we compete against an imagined version of ourselves. You are perfectly imperfect, just as you are. Free yourself from the imaginary chains of perfection. You are the only one who can do so.
I remember the countless times I canvassed the area afterwards, and asked everyone “did you see who did it”, and the popular response from the very same family members was always, “Fuck the Police, I aint no snitch, I’m gonna take care of this myself. This happened every single time, every single homicide, black on black, and then my realization became clearer.
I woke up every morning, put my freshly pressed uniform on, shined my badge, functioned checked my weapon, kissed my wife and kid, and waited for my wife to say the same thing she always does before I leave, “Make sure you come back home to us”. I always replied, “I will”, but the truth was I was never sure if I would. I almost lost my life on this job, and every call, every stop, every moment that I had this uniform on, was another possibility for me to almost lose my life again. I was a target in the very community I swore to protect, the very community I wanted to help. As a matter of fact, they hated my very presence. They called me “Uncle Tom”, and “wanna be white boy”, and I couldn’t understand why. My own fellow black men and women attacking me, wishing for my death, wishing for the death of my family. I was so confused, so torn, I couldn’t understand why my own black people would turn against me, when every time they called …I was there. Every time someone died….I was there. Every time they were going through one of the worst moments in their lives…I was there. So why was I the enemy? I dove deep into that question…Why was I the enemy? Then my realization became clearer.
Complaint: Police always targeting us, they always messing with the black man.
Fact: A city where the majority of citizens are black (Baltimore for example) …will ALWAYS have a higher rate of black people getting arrested, it will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting stopped, and will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting killed, and the reason why is because a city with those characteristics will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks committing crime. The statistics will follow the same trend for Asians if you go to China, for Hispanics if you go to Puerto Rico, for whites if you go to Russia, and the list goes on. It’s called Demographics
Complaint: More black people get arrested than white boys.
Fact: Black People commit a grossly disproportionate amount of crime. Data from the FBI shows that Nationwide, Blacks committed 5,173 homicides in 2014, whites committed 4,367. Chicago’s death toll is almost equal to that of both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined. Chicago’s death toll from 2001–November, 26 2015 stands at 7,401. The combined total deaths during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2015: 4,815) and Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan (2001-2015: 3,506), total 8,321.
Complaint: Blacks are the only ones getting killed by police, or they are killed more.
Fact: As of July 2016, the breakdown of the number of US Citizens killed by Police this year is, 238 White people killed, 123 Black people killed, 79 Hispanics, 69 other/or unknown race.
Fact: Black people kill more other blacks than Police do, and there are only protest and outrage when a cop kills a black man. University of Toledo criminologist Dr. Richard R. Johnson examined the latest crime data from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports and Centers for Disease Control and found that an average of 4,472 black men were killed by other black men annually between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2012. Professor Johnson’s research further concluded that 112 black men died from both justified and unjustified police-involved killings annually during this same period.
Complaint: Well we already doing a good job of killing ourselves, we don’t need the Police to do it. Besides they should know better.
The more I listened, the more I realized. The more I researched, the more I realized. I would ask questions, and would only get emotional responses & inferences based on no facts at all. The more killing I saw, the more tragedy, the more savagery, the more violence, the more loss of life of a black man at the hands of another black man….the more I realized.
I haven’t slept well in the past few nights. Heartbreak weighs me down, rage flows through my veins, and tears fills my eyes. I watched my fellow officers assassinated on live television, and the images of them laying on the ground are seared into my brain forever. I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been me, a black man, a black cop, on TV, assassinated, laying on the ground dead,..would my friends and family still think black lives mattered? Would my life have mattered? Would they make t-shirts in remembrance of me? Would they go on tv and protest violence? Would they even make a Facebook post, or share a post in reference to my death?
I realized that they refuse to believe that most cops acknowledge that there are Bad cops who should have never been given a badge & gun, who are chicken shit and will shoot a cockroach if it crawls at them too fast, who never worked in the hood and may be intimidated. That most cops dread the thought of having to shoot someone, and never see the turmoil and mental anguish that a cop goes through after having to kill someone to save his own life. Instead they believe that we are all blood thirsty killers, because the media says so, even though the numbers prove otherwise. I realize that they truly feel as if the death of cops will help people realize the false narrative that Black Lives Matter, when all it will do is take their movement two steps backwards and label them domestic terrorist. I realized that some of these people, who say Black Lives Matter, are full of hate and racism. Hate for cops, because of the false narrative that more black people are targeted and killed. Racism against white people, for a tragedy that began 100’s of years ago, when most of the white people today weren’t even born yet. I realized that some in the African-American community’s idea of “Justice” is the prosecution of ANY and EVERY cop or white man that kills or is believed to have killed a black man, no matter what the circumstances are. I realized the African American community refuses to look within to solve its major issues, and instead makes excuses and looks outside for solutions. I realized that a lot of people in the African American lead with hate, instead of love. Division instead of Unity. Turmoil and rioting, instead of Peace. I realized that they have become the very entity that they claim they are fighting against.
I realized that the very reasons I became a cop, are the very reasons my own people hate me, and now in this toxic hateful racially charged political climate, I am now more likely to die,… and it is still hard for me to understand…. to this day.
opensenseme 