The Quotable Queer

One of the most important aspects of making it through difficult situations is to be in touch with your feelings and emotions. It is absolutely critical to allow yourself the time, energy, and rest to manage the sometimes destructive, sometimes confusing and disorienting feelings and emotions that situations create within us.

Of course, directly after a crisis, it is highly probable that a period of shock and numbness be a part of your reaction. However, continuing to be numb to your inner compass and inner barometer can have disastrous consequences. At some point the dam built to shore up and control these feelings and emotions will break. It is important to have a viable support network in place to fall upon when that dam does break.

It is a simple leap when your life is in jeopardy to isolate yourself and settle into a depression tempered with numbness. Sometimes, it truly can appear as if it is the only way to decrease chaos in one’s life by limiting interactions with others. That isolation can bring a lack of new energy, new ideas and new direction to your life.

That lack of new direction keeps us on the same course. The old adage that repeating the same steps and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity immediately comes to mind. Without new direction, we will continue to make the same mistakes, the same moves that keep us in our zone of isolation, depression and numbness.

Breaking free of this depressive isolation stage of trauma recovery is especially difficult. However, if you ask for assistance from those that truly care and are part of your support network, usually guidance can be discovered.

If you do not have any support network, the ability to dig out of the depression must come from inside yourself. We are all capable of new direction in life; we need only be open to it as well as actively seeking it. If anyone can commit to those two concepts, then anything can be accomplished with time, perseverance and true effort.

And you can Quote me on that. The Quotable Queer

“I live in a transparent country. I live in a country where decisions made by government are wide open . . . Every decision we have made is within the Constitution of the United States. So, I’m perfectly comfortable telling you our country is one that safegurads human rights and human dignity, and we resolve our disputes in a peaceful way.”
-President Bush
February 24th, 2005
Bratislava, Slovakia
(Source: White House)

How many ways is the Bush Administration not transparent, not wide open, not safeguarding human rights and dignity? Let us count the ways.

1 - National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice refusal to testify before the 9/11 Commission (Source: MSNBC, March 28th, 2004)

2 -

“I’m the commander—see, I don’t need to explain—I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”

3 - White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales’ initial torture guidelines avoiding the application of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War (Source: Find Law)

4 - Vice President Dick Cheney’s refusal to disclose members of his energy task force, National Energy Policy Development Group (Source: MSNBC)

There are certainly countless other moments involving these and other members of the Bush Administration. That’s just very brief highlights of the most glaring ways that the administration of President George W Bush is not transparent and is not open and does not safeguard human rights and human dignity. Can we have an honest, open moment, Mr. President?

And you can Quote me on that. The Quotable QueerB

Viewing religion externally creates more and more division. We need to see and understand the inside, the essence of religion from a spiritual perspective. Where there is true spiritual experience there will be no division — only unity and love.

~ Amritanandanmayi Devi
Parliament of World Religions, Barcelona 2004

In a time of true division across the globe and within the United States, this particular quote is quite meaningful. Messages of hatred and moral superiority coming from such spiritual leaders like Pope John Paul II should be examined closely for accuracy to our own inner compass.

This inside perspective of life can truly be eye-opening to providing one with an inner drive and purpose as well as exposing the divisive efforts of those leaders around the world and people in one’s life. Becoming more in tune with one’s inner compass can only lead to increased connection to one’s path.

And you can Quote me on that. The Quotable Queer