THE PICTURE FRAME by Rick Kipp

 The polka dot people, they came from afar

by plane and boat and train and car

Aside from design, they were one and the same.

Dots, squiggles, swirls, and stripes

in the same picture frame.

See the stripes and all doodles

 worked hard at their jobs,

but some of the stripes

thought the dots just did not.

One day, the head stripe in charge declared, we want only the good dots

 and no other dots here.

He claimed these dots

stole jobs from hard working stripes.

He ordered them to be rounded up

in the dark of the night.

See the squiggles said nothing.

 Neither did the swirls.

They aren't after us, just the dots,

they concurred.

Once the dots were removed,

then the squiggles came next.

They were rounding up squiggles,

putting stamps on their necks.

The swirls and the stripes said,

They aren't after me. It's the dots and the squiggles that must bend the knee.

 When the squiggles were gone,

they went after the swirls,

 the men and the women,

 the boys and the girls.

Then the leader, he said,

now that it's just us stripes,

I suppose I'll get rid of

the stripes I don't like.

Children of Light by Star Livingstone

Here we are, Naomi, children of Light born into captivity like our parents before us.

We do as we're told. It's all we know.

We buy.  We sell.  We use.  We throw away.

We poison and we are poisoned.

We take.  We other.

We are obedient prisoners.

Yet we cry at night.  We long to escape.  But where would we go"?  How would we live?

We have no skills for any other life.

We look at the diminished world as through the wrong end of binoculars

And somehow know it is our home...

And every day we do the will of our captors.

We bow to Mammon, god of the Empire in which we live.  We hate it but feel compelled.

We don't know how to stop.

Yet there is a seed in us that carries our identity.

We water it with our tears, and it swells within us.

We hurt.  We want to do something, change something, break out.

But no, not yet.

All we can do now is to tend the seed.

Watch and wait.  Cultivate faith in the dark process of germination.

We will know the Light when we see it inside.

It is Love.

It is home. 

It is given.

It is effortless.

Doing is Empire thinking.

Allowing, acceptance; that is freedom.  That is LIght.

We can be liberated only if we resist our indoctrination

And engage in the hard, counter intuitive work of being,

Listening, 

Trusting,

Forgiving

Ourselves, and those parts of ourselves we call others, the process.

With singing.