The New Social Revolution

1:00 am, Thanksgiving morning. The pie is made, the yams are roasted, cranberry sauce chilling, the cornbread and wild rice and ready to join hands with celery, onions and mushrooms to create "stuffing" for the turkey. The turkey is defrosting in the fridge. The salad greens wait, the potatoes will know the kiss of sour cream and butter, baby peas and carrots will snuggle up together as they lightly steam. We'll groan afterwards that we ate too much, we always do.

We are on every side surrounded by plenty. Food, clothing, comfort, love - what blessings flow around us like an ever surging stream.

Our home is small and simply furnished but there's been a certain amount of expense with setting up housekeeping all over again. It's high time we climbed back on the very careful financial wagon and built up the savings account. Not just wise from a financial point of view, but from a philosophical and political one too.

One reason I love Rhonda Jean Hetzel's blog Down to Earth so much is that she and her husband Hanno are our age and are very self sufficient. They are both in good health and capable of much more physically than we are, with our genetically wonky muscles, but she makes her own soap, sews up her own clothes, knits and crochets, has a big garden and chickens (I have chicken envy), preserves and cans her own foods and bottles up beverages like cordials. Rhonda is the kind of all-round competent captain of the household that my grandmother was.

My mother knew how to do all these things, and did them in her early married life, but by the time I came along my parents were in their 40s and after the deprivations of WWII having store-bought was a mark that you'd arrived.

As time has gone by we've collectively given over our competence to the corporation, who is all too eager to do everything for us, at a price. I feel guilty buying things I could be making on my own, but I need a little pinstick of motivation to get me moving, so I was glad to run onto this post by a favorite "political" blogger of mine. If you like his take go read his blog, he's "older", and right on the mark (as far as I'm concerned anyway) and I enjoy what he has to say.

Repost from: Blogger William "Papa" Meloney's blog PA^2 Patois

Call to non-violent revolution: the New Social Revolution

We must first as individuals and then as a body enter into a non-violent insurgency against forces that remove our self-worth, our self-respect and most importantly our dignity.

The corner stone of our non-violent revolution will be: Living within our needs.

When we break the cycle of desire we will begin to escape the trap of materialism. When we live within our needs we begin to escape the trap that our profit driven captors hold us in. Succumbing to their fabricated crises of fake hunger and contrived vanity we willingly allow their influence to color our otherwise healthy decision making process.

We must allow ourselves to make better, healthy decisions.

We must live intentional lives, accepting personal responsibility by living to the measure of our needs.

When we deny supporting the driving efforts of desire-driven profiteers we throw off the yoke of their false desires.

- Papa