Why?

to bleed truth.

Already the wound has scabbed over;
already I've almost returned
habitually again wading through universal
sticky wet outpour of normal
life as we do it to ourselves

and I want to know how it happens
that hearts can fall open but
hearts just keep themselves clutched shut
There is so much truth,
so very very very very...

"I used to hope that poor people would turn out to be The Good Guys. And then I saw they were playing the same games as everyone else, only for smaller stakes."

   [ a rich contributor to San Diego's 'Street Light' (defunct: 1997-2004)]

I am not, like Roger Zelazny's Corwin, "an evil that exists to oppose other evils."

But I do sometimes find myself in such a role, and don't really like it, don't like being conflicted between saying what I know and looking good. Don't like incurring or feeling hostility.

It's possible that the worst effect of poverty is "being subject to definition by the people who relegate you to poverty." True of the "sinners" of Jesus' day, true of that whole US population born into the 60's, true of all the people born since, deprived of real hope by a real, continuing, "closing of the American mind." [That lid didn't just fall; it was slammed.]

Politics and religion can't help but interact. There's a religion-and-politics of forgiveness and healing; there's a religion-plus-politics that prefers to justify the "strong" versus the weak. Probably everyone drifts into that second camp from time to time.

But whether or not Jesus approves me or my ways... We know what side God sent him to uphold.

...

"Difficulty arises... because we are afraid to let go of what we think we know and be what's left. We're reluctant to ease up on the tight sense of control we exercise over ourselves because life is hard enough as it is. We don't want it any harder. "If I stop controlling myself to be one way rather than another, who knows what might happen? If I let go of every pretense and instead be genuine, things might get worse. Who knows what devil might be lurking in my depths?" But it's also beginning to dawn on us that we have blindly believed false and inaccurate concepts about who we are, and have been ignorant of our true nature until now simply because we've been taught otherwise, and that maybe we're different from what we've thought ourselves to be..."

[Erich Schiffmann, in Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Stillness]