In approximately 30 minutes I will head down to the parade grounds with puppy Shadow and my “corporate flag.” This will be our third year of marching in the parade. As I write this, the sky is darkening. The parade will run as scheduled, rain or shine.

I march in our local 4th of July parade because I’m interested to see how many people recognize my corporate flag for what it is, and how that recognition changes year by year. You might call it a home-grown, sociological study.

Meanwhile . . .

I continue to be fascinated about how Putin — so-far successfully — navigates swirling geopolitical currents by consistently identifying with the national interests of his Russian homeland and its historical values, which include the Russian Orthodox church. His attitude is in marked contrast to the predatory two-faced corporatocracy running the US that aims to grab, mine, and ruin the entire world while pretending to introduce “democracy” to the heathens. 

Russia, Solzhenitsyn, and the Reset Button

Excerpt:

The claims of Russia to her unique, historic life interests again came to the forefront when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s and Russia the nation and empire appeared on the verge of total disintegration. Russia found itself in desperate need of a Weltanschauung that would replace the communist ideology that had held the nation in its grip for seventy years. If she did not, she might even face the prospect of radical shrinkage back to the proportions of Kievan Rus, her empire absorbed into Eastern Europe and the Far East. For some, if not most, of Russia’s political and intellectual leaders, the prospect of seeing the Russian empire virtually disappear was unthinkable.

Discerning that a U.S. Marshall Plan was not in order for Russia, several main figures came forward with ideas for a Russian reset button, one which they saw as including the “historic life interests” of Russia in the post-communist era. One, of course, is Vladimir Putin, whose embrace of Russian Orthodoxy has been a reason for the elevation of Christianity to a place of influence it occupied for over a millennium.

One of the spiritual and philosophical influences behind Putin has been Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Partly due to Putin’s influence, Solzhenitsyn’s master work The Gulag Archipelago is now required reading in Russian schools.

Solzhenitsyn openly rejected the secularist and leftist liberal political philosophy dominating the cultures of Europe and America. Russia, he said, had her own unique spiritual and historic heritage, a heritage that clashed with the dominant ideology of the West. Though he admired the spirituality of the American heartland, he saw the West in general as drowning in a vortex created by moral degradation, anti-religious sentiment, and extreme individualism.

. . .

In other words, if Russia was an enigma, it was due to Western blindness, a blindness that was largely due to spiritual cataracts. If Russia seemed inscrutable, it was because American and the rest of the West failed to understand the Russian soul and the Russian nation. No reset was possible unless the West returned to its own Christian spiritual roots. Until spiritual eyeglasses provided vision, the materialistic but powerful West would remain blinded by its sense of total superiority.

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I find much of the above article fascinating, except for the idea of the U.S. “returning to its Christian roots.” Can you imagine? Those “roots” are relatively shallow on this vast land mass; plus, they carry with them the ghosts of murderous, righteous medieval Crusades and later Inquisition that devastated whole cultures, including, centuries later, our Native American heritage that knows/feels Earth as our Mother. 

If we wish to return to our spiritual roots, then let us dig back to the time before we westerners even arrived! That might help us re-orient ourselves to the entire panoply of existence. 

Meanwhile, 

From Lada Ray’s newest predictions (about the EU, but could extend to the U.S.):

My EU Predictions Materializing!

Excerpt:

In ESR12 I also predicted that the traditional 20th century labeling of parties as ‘centrist,’ leftist,’ or ‘right-wing’ is archaic and will go away soon. Eventually, any party or movement will be judged by their attitude towards Russia, EU, a country’s sovereignty, emigration, NATO/GMO/TTIP and various associations, US hegemony and dollar. These will be the key criteria for the voters determining how to vote, not the usual party labels!

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Imagine who we would be here on the U.S. land mass if let go of our polarized labels and surrendered to the inherent rhythms of the entire cosmos. What if we began to see/feel the natural world as our true spiritual home, spiritual teacher? 

I close with a quote from one of the letters of Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century christian mystic/poet/composer/herbalist/theologian and Benedictine abbess whose intoxicating visions and teachings both anticipate current ecological systems thinking and amazingly, had the ear of the church hierarchy. 

“From him the wind blows, saying: lacking no power, I have set the firmament with all its ornaments, with eyes to see, ears to hear, a nose to smell, a mouth to taste. For the sun is like the light of His eyes, the wind like the hearing of His ears, the air like His fragrance, the dew like His taste, exuding viridity like His mouth. The moon marks the times of the seasons, and reveals knowledge to men. And the stars, which seem to be rational, are indeed so, because they are circular, just as rationality embraces many things. I shored up the four corners of the earth with fire, cloud and water, and in this way I joined together all the boundaries of the world like veins. I formed rocks from fire and water like bones, and I established earth from moisture and viridity like marrow. I stretched out the abyss like feet.”