Morning Glory

Morning Glory

Just-before-sunrise

around a switch-backed blacktop loop--
confronted--
confounded
surprised stop
yanked by the mountain-rise above

vast flowing river’d expanse below,
that glistened watered width to distance’s horizon,

and those high forested foothills across in Oregon,
here
--shocked in beauty--

off a 2-lane routed asphalt low-way road
belaying up Cape Horn’s side--
Immense, eyed-wide
That vast Vista!

Mellowed Gorge, oh Columbia,
awe-souled
shade of dawn,
down
to the swift water's
insomnia
below

Caught in the Rise


-Daniel Wilcox


In the light of confounded Beauty,

Daniel Wilcox

Catalonia Voted. Once the British Colonies Voted. Do Humans Have the Right to Leave Their Nation?

CATALONIA VOTED!

BUT Madrid's central government denied the democratic vote, in fact, previously, sent national police who attacked largely peaceful Catalonians who were only trying to vote!

Here we go again: DO humans have the right to vote to leave a nation?

The Founding Fathers said "Yes."

The British Parliament and King George said, "No."

What do you think?

Do humans have the democratic right to leave a nation they currently belong to?

#1 American colonists voting to leave Britain?

#2 Catalonians voting to leave Spain?

Etc.


What is the truth in the Light, when it comes to human rights?

Daniel Wilcox

Please Protest Against U.S Deportation of 10-year-old, arrested after gall bladder surgery

Please protest against U.S. deportation of 10-year-old, arrested after gall bladder surgery:

from 10-Year-Old Immigrant Is Detained After Agents Stop Her on Way to Surgery
By VIVIAN YEE and
CAITLIN DICKERSONOCT. 25, 2017

"Rosamaria Hernandez, a 10-year-old unauthorized immigrant, in a photograph provided by her family. She was detained after undergoing emergency gall bladder surgery.
A 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy has been detained by federal immigration authorities in Texas after she passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint on her way to a hospital to undergo emergency gall bladder surgery.

The girl, Rosamaria Hernandez, who was brought over the border illegally to live in Laredo, Tex., when she was three months old, was being transferred from a medical center in Laredo to a hospital in Corpus Christi around 2 a.m. on Tuesday when Border Patrol agents stopped the ambulance..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/us/girl-cerebral-palsy-detained-immigration.html

How demeaning, lacking in compassion, unjust, unfair...

What is happening to the United States?


Stand against injustice!

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Don't "Make America Great" Again!

With so many endless claims of how we need to “make American great again,” here’s why that makes little sense:

Consider John C. Calhoun, one of America’s greatest, most honored American leaders of the past:
A government committee led by John F. Kennedy chose John C. Calhoun as one of the five greatest United States Senators ever!
John C. Calhoun became the seventh Vice President of the U.S.,
also ran for president,
was Secretary of State,
was Secretary of War twice,
was a U.S. Congressman,
and then South Carolina’s Senator, etc.

Calhoun was a committed slave owner like 12 American Presidents including Andrew Jackson who invaded another country, who, allegedly, according to the news is one of President Donald Trump's heroes.

America used to be much worse than now, NOT "Great" by any stretch of the mind.

Read John C. Calhoun's views opposing human rights, equality, freedom, etc.: “…nothing can be more unfounded and false—the prevalent opinion that all men are free and equal.”

” These great and dangerous errors have their origin in the prevalent opinion that all men are born free and equal;—than which nothing can be more unfounded and false.”

“It [universal human equality and freedom] never did, nor can exist; as it is inconsistent with the preservation and perpetuation of the race.”

“It follows, from what has been stated, that it is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty.”
“It is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike;—a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic,
the virtuous and deserving...an all-wise Providence has reserved it...”
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/…/disquisition-on-gover…/


Become seekers of the truth, goodness, equality, liberty, justice, beauty...

Maybe in the future that could help America become great ethically for the first time.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Best Visual Satire against religion and for Science!

Move over Swift, Huxley, and Vonnegut:-)

Make way for Telescope Hero!

Though too bad the photographer didn't picture a reason-math-science woman...
but realize he's alluding to the Terminator.


I'm still laughing,

Daniel Wilcox

a News Story of Caring and Medical Wonder, Conjoined Twins

In the midst of all of the political and religious darkness, here's a news story of the WONDER of human caring and medical expertise!

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-41607653

Go and do thou likewise:-) at your own ability and career level.
Help those in need, care for the dying, rescue the perishing...

In the LIGHT of caring,

Daniel Wilcox

To Live in the Light, to Act Truly Human

Of late, there have been so many negative actions by religionists and politicians, that it's hard not to focus on that chasm, and spend time 'cursing the darkness,'
BUT as the title of this blog emphasizes, instead, become a "lightwave seeker."

So, today,
here is a short summary of Transcendent Humanism and Moral Realism.

To Act Truly Human

Part #1: To Live in the Light, Focus on the New Ought, Not on the Past---of What Is or Has Been

"I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him."
--Martin Luther King Jr.

Part #2: To Act Truly Human, Be Generous—Freely Give to Those in Need

Part #3: To Live in the Light, Treat All Others as Equal—View All Humans as Inherently of Worth and Value

Part #4: To Act Truly Human, Focus on the Transcendent—Live for the Good, Beyond the Temporal and Transient and Any Action that Is Wrong

Part #5: To Live in the Light, Do LovingKind Acts—Live with Empathy, Compassion, and Caring for All Others; Cherish and Help

Part #6: To Act Truly Human, Seek Justice—Work for Human Rights, Fairness, Impartiality


Part #7: To Live in the Light, Live in Fidelity--Commit to One Other Person in a Covenanted Relationship Meant to Be for Life;

Reject and Resist the Wiles of Adultery, Promiscuity, Polyamory, Polygamy, Pornography

Part #8: To Act Truly Human, Speak the Truth in Love to Everyone--Be Honest; Oppose Lies, Deceptions, Manipulations,
Obscene Cursings, and All Forms of Propaganda

Part #9: To Live in the Light, Cultivate and Cherish Community. Commune with Ultimate Reality (whatever you want to term it--God, the Divine, the Good, etc.) and Commune with Other Humans. Share Deeply

Part #10: To Act Truly Human, Live in Wonder; Rejoice in Beauty and the Mysteries of the Universe

(For instance, Albert Einstein
explained that he wasn't an Atheist
because, unlike them, he was enthralled
with the beautiful structure of the cosmos and said, if he wasn't Jewish, he would become a Quaker.)

Part #11: To Live in the Light, Care for Nature and Its Creatures
(This ethical goal is a good alternative against
the wrong extremes--
that of Paganism and Hinduism which claim that
natural evils such as malaria are somehow "holy"
and okay!
versus
that of Secularism which too often sees
the natural world as only a thing to use,
even exploit.)

Part #12: To Act Truly Human, Create New Concepts and Things of Wonder

Part #13: To Live in the Light, Focus on the New Ought, Not on the Past of What Is or Has Been

"I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him."
--Martin Luther King Jr.

I'm working on the central concept of what it means to be truly human, not in the basic evolutionary sense, but in the ethical one, in the transcendent sense.

(Most of us know that we are homo sapiens, one branch of primates resulting from over 3 billion years of evolutionary history.
For a biological explanation of our species, check out any fine book on evolutionary biology.)

What ethical truths should I add to the beginning list of 10 for 2018?

Become a committed theist, humanist, Enlightenment ethicist, moral realist, free-seeker.

Do avidly seek the Good, the True, the Beautiful, equality, peace, justice, mercy, compassion, fidelity, monogamy, generosity, meticulous honesty, and so forth.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox
Posted by Daniel Wilcox at 9:48 AM 2 comments: Links to this post
Labels: adultery, compassion, covenant, empathy, equality, fidelity, honesty, human rights, justice, lovingkindness, obscenity, polyamory, polygamy, pornography, promiscuity

"A Better Country"

Nationalism in the United States, again, is often far right or far left.

BUT both extremes are actually dead center.

In the U.S. whether we are liberal or a conservative, we, probably, are culpable.

If the latter—Trumpers, right-wingers, you champion the U.S. calling it the best country in the world, but deny
selfhood to emerging nations and minorities, and fail
to admit your own nation’s shortcomings and unethical actions, past and present.

Your whole focus is on U.S. First, U.S. First. (Talk about selfish!)

If the former—BLMers, Antifaers, you enthusiastically support the cause of any ethnic or other religion
or group or foreign nation in the world to be self-determined, yet look with abhorrence
at the U.S. if it defends itself.

Your whole focus is on U.S. Last, U.S. Last. (Talk about negative!)

But those who follow the Light "desire a better country."


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

A LAS T

Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images



A Las t

Alas, grieving sorrow,
Tribulating
Don’t ask from where—
Shenandoah; Shiloh...Meadows
Down to Sheol

Welted eyes again, shadowed tears,
Wind-cuffed faces with ‘full’d’ lashings
Dusted wind
Of more less and less,

Wiping away
With wept wetness
In a downward swirling wet sweep,

Faces lost, lastless,

The torn night sky, starless in
A multiple series of weeping losses,

Stark--
Abyss’d fall of all welling reveries
Wailing
In this wreck--aging.

How long, how many tomorrow’s tomorrow

This a las—ting loss lostness?

Selah


--Daniel Wilcox
First pub. In The New Verse News
in different form

The Tragic Evil of the Holocaust: Whether to Forgive Nazis?

WATCH: Holocaust Survivor Explains Why She Forgave Dr. Mengele
September 27, 2017 By Aiden Pink

"Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor forgave the Nazis, including Dr. Josef Mengele, who experimented on her.

A Holocaust survivor explained in a video for BuzzFeed that has been watched more than 40 million times why she forgave the Nazi doctor who experimented on her and her twin sister.

Eva Mozes Kor and her family were deported from Romania to Auschwitz in May 1944. She and her twin sister Miriam were saved from death and sent to be experimented upon by Dr. Josef Mengele and his team, who sought to study twins.

Her father, mother, and other siblings were sent to the right, she and her twin to the left, never to see their family again.

She explained how, 50 years later, she met with Dr. Hans Munch, one of the doctors there, who was convinced to sign a document attesting to the veracity of the Auschwitz gas chambers. Mozes Kor also signed a document there forgiving him and all Nazis, and later explained that she had specifically forgiven Mengele."

Eva Mozes Kor: “I felt free, free from Auschwitz, free from Mengele...We cannot change what happened. That is the tragic part. But we can change how we relate to it.”

"While she said that most Holocaust survivors had denounced her, Mozes Kor called it “an act of self-healing, self-liberation, self-empowerment..."

Read more: http://forward.com/fast-forward/383753/watch-holocaust-survivor-explains-why-she-forgave-dr-mengele/




Live in the Light,

Daniel Wilcox