To The One Living in Loneliness
Those who receive empty words from the preacher, those whose conservative and traditional values of living, values to him not defined as conservative or traditional, just the right way of living, those whose words of his mom and dad are not respected, those ridiculed by the liberal elite, the NPR elite, the Washington elite, to the person who is looked down as stupid and dumb from men and women with long noses having no value, these are the people of our country.
The person subject to physical and emotional abuse, the person whose job is a dead-end job, the person struggling to pay the rent, feed the children, the person whose children are victims of a failing school system in so many forms are the core of this country.
We live no differently from the serf, the peasant of the feudal ages. With one difference, there is. We today know and have experienced the taste of freedom.
The person living in loneliness, the person fearing the future, the person asking what happens to me when I die, the person with no friends, the person whose voice is not heard, this person is the core of our country.
The person entangled in the judicial system because of failure to pay medical bills, or bills arising from the purchase of that necessary to live, to survive, the person caught in the middle of what America is said to be and what it is, this person is the core of our country.
The person who is a veteran, of the army, navy, air force, marine, having seen the facts of the world going home to a country ignorant of these facts, the person who is denied fairness due to a disability, the person living these ways being many separate and kept away from the few taking their labor’s fruits to buy a yacht, this person is the core of our country.
Life is precious. Time is fleeting. Let us get moving.
The wicked lay in wait as the lion with the sheep their prey. The lion being the few, the rich. The sheep being the many, the creators of the rich.
To me the answer is to end the church as it exists enslaving, with the few, the people with ignorance, with a theology, a patriotic theology, the thinking man making no sense. The Islamic religion as stated and practiced like the church is a far cry from the teachings of their founder, Mohammed.
Our country is not the best country, but it does contain the best of hope. I will not let this hope be trampled upon.
People we worship live under false oaths. The powerful conspire, freely engaging in crime. They hide in ambush like the lion.
We have a duty to the fatherless. To the orphan/ To the poor. Our duty is a devotion to stand in the way of those, pretending and saying otherwise, ignoring the poor, the people who live and work making our day what it is today.
DARE TO LIVE
Each of us desires to be part of something good and wholesome. Each of us desires to be respected in a democracy that is not only political but economic.
Each of us desires a job that enables us to live, feed and care for our family, to feel important and needed. None of us want a hand-out.
But as long the rich man governs, we have what is presented by the politician as a democracy when in fact our better angels are put to flight.
Strive for a country where there are no secrets governing us thus allowing us to restore ourselves.
Too many know a daily life of one struggle after another. Your face is not seen. Your voice is not heard. No one is listening.
Once we were part of the consciousness of our country, but no more are we, producing feelings of emptiness and insignificance. The political process excludes us. Work brings little satisfaction and acknowledgment.
Worrying about bills, health, children, parents, family consume the day creating a chaotic life.
The rich are organized, we are not. The rich are strong, we are not.
We work in our shops, our stores, our whare-houses, our food places, factories, hospitals, paid a wage not supporting a sustainable life.
No say in your work do we have. No different are we than the peasants of Feudal Europe.
Your honor and pride are trampled upon giving us loneliness, as politically expendable people making the holding onto hope difficult with the vitality flowing from it gone.
Each of us wants happiness, to be understood, to care for ourselves and family. We desire a life of meaning, a life that possesses value and matters.
You are needed and important and your spiritual life is good. No longer, I ask you to build a country hostile to you.
Build a country that does not crush hope but builds on it. You are an entity unto yourself running against your need for community. Unlike the rest, unlike the few, you build a world for the few leaving you a world of violence and insecurity.
Depression grows becoming internalized with ill health setting in physically, mentally and spiritually. With this loneliness comes futility, lack of belonging, lack of friendliness. Fatalism sets in. Isolation is your constant companion.
You are ignored except when needed for your work, your money and participation in a war not relevant to you.
There is no one to stand with you. No unions. No leaders. No Moses to lead you out of slavery through the desert to the Promised Land.
The welfare state exists not for you, not for the benefit of the worker, the poor, but for the wealthy. The rich inherent wealth. The poor, the worker, inherent debt.
Does not to be this way.
To the rich and the poor, the white and black, the Republican and Democrat, the Conservative and Liberal, the Christian, Hebrew and Muslin, each of you has value, each matter, each is important. Each I respect
To all possessing hope, a new way awaits you, a new religion, a new country, moving forward with the vitality implicit in hope.
Nothing is stopping us from crossing that Rubicon except ourselves. If we do not take a stand who will?
IT IS SEEDTIME
Seedtime, a time when in your life, the place where you work is a burden upon your life, your family, your dreams; when the politician comes to you for your vote without talking to you; when the politician knows little about how you live; when the politician does not talk about your problems because he is clueless as to how you live, how you think.
Worse is the politician does not care about you. To him you lack value. You do not matter. You are in his eye no more than a commodity.
Then there is the preacher spewing words of little help or consolation.
When the sun rises, when the sun sets, your struggles, your questions, are your struggles, your questions, and no one cares but you. You are alone.
But why should the politician care when he is there as an agent of a man, a woman, not known to you, who controls the money, with one interest, to seek riches.
And the preacher, he pretends to be what he is not when he stands with the man, the woman, with the money, robbing you of what you created.
He speaks of the Gospel telling you what it says, telling you what to believe, what to think, in total disregard to what makes you and me unique; that is the ability to think.
People want security, the means to be independent in a secure way. They want a life where the mental, physical and spiritual struggles are met. I say,
Give rise to a way of thinking, an old way, a conservative way, demanding the politician be your agent with a preacher who speaks of your inherent ability to think for yourself.
We live in a world where never have so many suffered for the few to live so well. This is wrong.
This suffering involves challenges to livable housing, good health, mentally and physically, self-esteem and a hope dying at the door of religion.
The resulting feeling of being left out, left behind, losing interest in community, and country, leads to alcohol, drug addiction and worse.
The political order controlled by the few perpetuates this failing economic order with its social order, while controlling the many, you and me, through control of the educational process and news media. But,
When one is left alone, faced with extinction, the instinct to survive takes over, looking for a way of living searching for answers not found in the economic, political order and certainly not found in religion with its agents of hypocrisy failing to address this search.
The way forward is to develop the idea, an old idea, a conservative idea, each matter, each possesses value, and these values are enhanced when this idea is the foundation of an economy breeding by necessity a political order caring for community and country.
You and I possess no economic independence, no economic energy. So how can we have a say in our lives, in the government directing our future, directing where our blood will be spent, when we lack the power to direct our lives?
What we are told to believe, the ethics we are told to endorse, simply do not fit the world in which we live. Rather our ethics are dominated by the ethics of the few, men and women of greed, who own the politician, owning you, owning the preacher. This ethics fits the world of the few.
Those who are purportedly our leaders do not deserve imitation.
Therefore, I say this.
Want to predict the future, then create the future as President Lincoln said. Or as Jesus said, exert your will. See that,
The liberal is no more honest than the conservative for each wants the same, power, power for themselves, for the men and women who put them where they are.
But they cannot have this power if you have this power. So, take it away. You can do it. We can it.
The politician robs you of your power. Your boss robs you of your money. The preacher robs you of your mind. Dignity is lost and once dignity is gone it is not possible to take it back.
There is a dream called America. A good dream this is. A universal dream it is. Own your land, own your country. Direct your life by the vote with the right to revolt when all fails to honor your dignity.
Our instinct for meaning, for spiritual fulfillment, for happiness, appears no longer met but the dream, the American dream, remains as always throughout time and space.
You are the soil. You are the water from the heavens. You are the Sun. You are the wind. It only takes that which is reserved to man. Free will. Demand your Will be respected and honored.
It is seedtime.
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AGENDA of PRIME DIRECTIVES
Justice is achieved in the establishment of a community recognizing the laboring classes created the capital classes. Together we win. Let Us Unite.
The condition of our country, our communities is not acceptable. There is too much waste of whom we truly are, whom we can be, whom we fail to honor.
Each day of my life I engage with all of God's creatures seeing with an eye not constrained by the bitterness of the hearts so dominate in our lives understanding each of us in our own way is as lovely as the spring morning.
A world, where blood rains down more than the water of the rain, does not need to be our future. We have a choice. We have free will. Blood does not need to be our lives to be. Does not need to be the world of our children. Does not to be the world of our grandchildren.
Each in our own way possess a duty, a duty, defined by the circumstances of each, to not rebuild what we may have lost but to go on building upon what our fathers and mothers did giving due tribute to their struggles and successes with a focus on being as they lived, being righteous as they knew righteousness, and doing acts of goodness as they understood goodness.
Go to Get Involved above and contact us.
Together We Win, Separate We Lose
“They tried to break us, but we are not broken. We have done our share bringing up the coal keeping the country warm. And we deserve not to be used this way. The bosses listening to their bosses are not fit to be bosses. The preacher is not fit to preach telling us to forgive these bosses. They know little making poor men of the cloth.” Words of miners, men and children.
The Elites, corporate and banking, control every aspect of your life, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Their numbers are few. Your numbers are many.
Many of you reading these words go on in life because you have no choice in a hollow world hoping for a good life.
I say no to this way of living. We can do better. I invite you to a life with the goal of setting men and women free. To fight for a world where no man or woman bows to another. Where no one advances because of royalty or the station into which he or she was born. Rather to do something, to build a home.
But to do this we must fight for all people, to see all people possess value, each matter. The material world we fight for will be gone a thousand years from now, perhaps a decade from now. But the battle for each other will not be gone.
It is up to us to in our own ways to build a new world. Not a world driven by greed, guns, lies, whipping the worker into submission or a world of lying politicians, Democrat and Republican.
The politician, of all backgrounds, speaks of liberality but in the morning gives each of you no more than a shovel to dig your grave on your way to work to make his life real and your life a reflection of the real.
I invite you to see courage always wins. And it is in this courage where and when we begin to see each worships the same God, has the same desires and hopes.
Life is a struggle, and in this struggle, we struggle to survive, this being the history of man.
You have a choice which side of history you will be.
We do not decide to be born into this world. We do not decide into what part of life we are to be born. But once here we have the power to decide how to live and how to die.
But you cannot make this decision unless you are free from want, ignorance, vice, prejudice and religious dogma, free from division from your neighbor.
The way I see it each politician, Democrat and Republican, is the same because their boss is the same. Their bosses are united. We, the people, the working people, the poor, the aged, the immigrant are not united because the Elites, corporate and banking, divide us imposing upon us their lines of division grounded in patriotic and religious bigotry making a people dumb.
A people dumb and fighting among themselves are no match for the few who are united. That is the few, the Elites. united in wealth, privilege with a religion used not for God but for man.
The conservative of today speaks of freedom while insisting on compliance with his definition of freedom. The liberal speaks of the enlightened way forward and because it is the enlightened way any deviation is treated no different from the conservative insistence on compliance with his definition of freedom. Intolerance runs rampant.
We are as the miners, men and children, whose words you read above.
I ask you to come with me to establish a community recognizing it is the laboring classes that created the capital classes.
Together we win. Separate we lose.
WE CAN DO BETTER
Are you,
Uncomfortable with religion? Uncomfortable with life? Does the word "struggle" describe your day? Are you slipping out of the experience and consciousness of the country, living a life with no face, no voice, no one hearing you?
Feeling empty and insignificant? Feeling detached from the political system?
You work hard with little satisfaction, if any.
Are you constantly worrying about bills, worrying about your children, your parents, and family.
You and those working with you are not organized with your honor and pride trampled upon, working in the shops, hotels, food stores, Home Depots, hospitals, factories, and beyond throughout the country being paid less than needed to sustain life. Too many of you work, living in poverty in loneliness being politically expendable with no hope, no vitality.
Life fails to answer your concerns. You desire happiness, to understand life, to care for self and family, to be part of something meaningful. You desire to feel you possess value, that you matter, possess importance, secure with a religion that makes sense.
But you work to build a country hostile to you, the worker, the poor, the old, and the immigrant crushing hope and ambition unlike the worker and the poor coming over from the old-world thinking, believing they have a future.
Today, such thinking is fleeting forcing you and those with you to be an entity unto you selves thinking and feeling unlike the rest of the country, a country built for the few to enjoy leaving you out leaving you to the violence and death in a world where motivation seems pointless ending ambition.
Depression grows becoming internalized with ill health setting in physically, mentally and spiritually. With this loneliness comes futility, lack of belonging, lack of friendliness. Fatalism sets in. Isolation is your constant companion.
You are ignored except when needed for your work, your money and participation in war not relevant to you.
There is no one to stand with you. No unions. No leaders. No Moses to lead you out of slavery through the desert to the Promised Land.
The welfare state exists not for you, not for the benefit of the worker, the poor, but for the wealthy.
The system cannot exist, the rich cannot be rich, without the welfare system. It helps the worker, the poor, the least with benefits accorded not according to need or merit, but to power.
The rich inherent wealth. The poor inherent debt.
Conventional wisdom, the orthodox, these the tools of the rich, operate to impede progress with no way forward. Socio-economic structures inhibit government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Capitalism, a potential of beauty, is being driven into the ground by the weak minded, people of greed.
Conflict and division among the people, the workers, the poor, are hardened by ignorance created by the vested interests who believe in capitalism for the worker and the poor, and socialism for the rich.
Does not to be this way.
To the rich and the poor, the white and black, the Republican and Democrat, the Conservative and Liberal, the Christian, Hebrew and Muslin, each of you has value, each matter, each is important. Each I respect.
To all possessing hope, a new way awaits you, a new religion, a new country, moving forward with the vitality implicit in hope.
It is seedtime.
Happens at times in history when the economic, political, social and religious institutions fail to address the meaning all people instinctively seek. What follows is a new way of thinking.
The economy has failed to provide for the many while providing for the few causing the many to lives of challenges for decent and safe housing, good health, mentally and physically, self-esteem and hope. Feeling left out, left behind losing interest in community, and country, ensue leading to alcoholism, drug addiction, restlessness and disillusion. The political order controlled by the few perpetuates this failing economic order, through control of the education process and the news media.
Left alone, this instinct to survive takes over, looking for a new way of living, a new way of thinking searching for answers not found in the economic and political order and not found in a religion failing to address this search.
Failure of shelter, failure of food, failure of good health leads to the destruction of the artistic instincts, breeding hopelessness, withdrawal, hatred menacing the society in which we are expected to live and thrive in calmness, contentment and peace. Walking away from morality leads to a poor life in many ways.
Way forward is to develop a life where each matter, each possesses value, enhanced when this thinking is the foundation of the economy giving us a political order that cares for community and country.
Bookstore - Contents
A Couple Tries to Live in Baltimore
Let me introduce you to Ethan and Patricia, a young couple in their early to mid-20s living in the Cockeysville area of Baltimore County. They met in an elite public high school in Baltimore City. Within a few years of graduation and after having attended community college for a few years, they married.
The wedding was simple, followed by a gathering in the church hall of a Catholic church. Their moms and dads, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, some older, some younger, were in attendance. Joy hung in the air as they began their lives together eagerly planning a future of security, children, and making their parents loving grandparents.
Ethan and Patricia represent American youth at their best living among millions no different than they. They are the future and because they work hard, root for their Orioles and Ravens, suffering depression when the Ravens lose to the Steelers, taking pride in themselves, their family, their community, they present a good and positive American future. They are the future.
Ethan and Patricia being good Catholics believe in God in the sanctity of the unborn. They are a serious couple.
Ethan works at a large retail establishment in Cockeysville, Maryland selling foodstuff, lawn mowers, aspirin, and whatever you can imagine full time being paid $16.50 per hour while Patricia works at the same establishment as a part time employee. She also is paid $16.50 per hour.
They are proud Americans celebrating the independence of their country on the 4th of July with family in the back yard of a grandparent eating hot dogs, potato salad followed by fireworks. Dogs beg for food with great rewards. Memorial Day and Labor Day are remembered well though many of these holidays are workdays for Ethan and Patricia while for many others these are days to buy a mattress.
Patricia’s part-time hours amount to 20 hours per week. Between the two of them their monthly household income is $4,290.00 depending on Patricia’s hours worked. This is pretax income.
Nationally for this store, the percentage of part-time associates is 50%, well above the national average at 29%. It was 20% in 2005. Part time employees can expect to work 18 to24 hours a week making Patricia fortunate in having more hours of work.
Their employer is reported to be the largest private employer in the United States with 1.5 million employees. Its part-time activity is reported to be very active in the Baltimore area.
To some their income sounds like a lot of money, to others like a little. Which is it?
The answer is how much does a young married couple hoping to have children living in Cockeysville, Maryland need to make their dreams a reality.
Part Two
They have a total income before taxes and deductions of $4,290.00 per month.
They have a monthly budget:
Rent $1,400.00
Utilities 300.00
Groceries 600.00
Transportation 400.00
Clothing 100.00
Cell 200.00
Cable 150.00
Health Care 50.00
Rental Insurance 25.00
Miscellaneous 200.00
FICA Taxes 355.00
Federal Tax 230.00
State and Local
Taxes 385.00
4290.00-4,395.00=(-105.00.00)
Their income is absorbed 100 % plus more by the expenses to meet minimum way of life. No room for savings. Their dream to have a child remains. This is their life.
Work. Pay the rent. Work. Pay the utilities. Work. Then go back to work again and again.
Years go by with no change except increases in rent, utilities, food, transportation and so on. Increases in income? None or not enough to meet inflation.
No changes describe their lives except more bills to pay with less money with one more change. Patty is now pregnant.
Part Three
The family, now being three not two, does not increase the number of hours worked except to the extent extra hours may be worked creating overtime for Ethan but not Patricia. She works part time so she can work more hours at the same rate.
There will be additional expenses on a regular basis such as child-care, food, formula, diapers, clothing, medical care. Before the third member of the family, income failed to meet expenses. There would now be more expenses. From where will the needed additional revenue originate?
Child Care for three days a week $210.00
Health and Hygiene Products 20.00
Formula 40.00
Food 160.00
Diapers 75.00
Clothing 60.00
Monthly total $565.00
Other than her employer offering benefits up to ten weeks of paid time off to eligible birth mothers,, Ethan and Patricia are on their own.
Some of these expenses can be lessened with help from family like their parents, the grandparents, an aunt, uncle or friend. Government aid can help. Absence these resources this couple has only their employment to help them. Is it enough? No.
With no increase in hours worked by either parent, meaning income at $4,209.00, Ethan and Patricia are facing a shortage of $670.00 per month or $8,040.00 per year.
Please contact me at stephenkirsch@hotmail.com or 443-322-4226.
Together let us make a difference in the same manner many before did years ago with the then messengers.