Open Letter to a Loved One

(who, in her 40th year of life—now married 18 years and without a longed-for child—published a brief account of the physical and sexual abuse she suffered in childhood and beyond.)

Reborn from the Ashes by Benjamín Calatrava
(See attribution info below* from Wikimedia Commons) 

Dear DASB:

First, let me say how sorry I am that you have suffered so much; that you are one of the ACE¹ children whose life have been so disrupted and damaged; that what you feel and think has been so impacted forever. I have suspected in recent years that you, and perhaps others of your siblings, had suffered because of your difficult family circumstances (and because of what I have learned in recent years about the prevalence of abuse), but at the time of your youth and with your family living so far away, we never suspected anything. Such abuse was not on the radar of most common folk, even 20 years ago.

I am glad you finally wrote of it with such passion and commitment to self-determination and self-preservation. You reveal in your words what the ACE studies reveal about ACE consequences. I understand, in part, how ACE colors the whole life thereafter, and why you passionately assert “the [absolute] right for women to choose what happens to THEIR individual bodies”; that it is “MY BODY to keep or release a pregnancy as I see fit.”²

Thus, I know you are not ready to hear this now, and maybe never, but I write this here, hoping that at some future date you (or some other) may be able to appreciate the irony in what you (or they may) now believe and so passionately insist: “I can NEVER budge on—”

Can you appreciate the irony? how YOUR very own words might echo the cry of a spirit-being as its mortal mother contemplates abortion?

“It is *MY* ,,, BODY.”
“My beautiful, amazing, miraculous, powerful, [long-awaited], and [soon-to-be-] liberated body.”
“MY BODY to own.”
“MY BODY to make choices for.”

“My body is not YOUR temple.”
“My body is not YOUR toy.”
“MY BODY IS MINE.”

OR, even as passionately, might this voice also cry:

»  I am NOT a static blueprint. I am on internal life-support for brief months in your body—as real, as vital as you, with your external life-support from mother earth.
»  MY body—MY DNA—is unique, unlike any other ever conceived. It can and will NEVER be duplicated.
»  Can you truthfully judge the value of MY physical/spiritual stages of growth?
»  Do you have the right to measure when MY life begins or when it ends when your agency³ resulted in MY conception—when you willfully engaged in an act that you knew had risk of ME?
»  If you do not want ME—if you are not prepared to receive ME, there are others who will thank you forever for preserving ME.
»  If you are angry with God, nature, circumstance, or self for the unequal consequence (burden?) placed upon women, please do not take it out on ME.
»  If you don't believe in God, please believe in the worth/value/future of ME.

What do we reply to this voice echoing our own cries for affirmation and value? Does the suggestion of such a voice enrage us? Do we deny its value—its reality? Do we do unto the embryo/fetus what has been done to us? Or do we do unto that spirit/body (whether fully conjoined or not) what we desire to have done to our spirit/body?

In this echoing voice can we hear?

... the embryo child in a world beguiled
By rights of all but those.⁴

The additional irony in this “absolute right” is that ACE sometimes perpetuates itself, generation after generation, because some ACE children / adults become so locked into self-determinism or sometimes, self-loathing, addiction, or déjà vu that they cannot comprehend the damage they perpetuate because of the damage that was done to them.

It is difficult to understand why so much abuse and suffering is allowed, except that so many of us use our agency at the expense of others. But even in the ashes of regret, fear, disappointment, sorrow, suffering, and confusion, beauty can arise.⁵

And yes, all this “spirit-dimension” voicing can be denied or rejected, but perhaps Shakespeare was more right than we care to admit when he wrote:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
      - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.

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1. ACE = Adverse Childhood Experience: See prior Déjà Vu posts on this topic: https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2017/02/tell-me-about-your-childhood.html ; https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-faces-of-ace.html ; https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2017/02/a-thousand-points-of-enlightenment.html ; See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experiences_Study
2. She adds: (“Yes! Even after 18-gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, tear-inducing, marriage-straining years of infertility, I still get that choice. It's MINE.”) But is this truly an absolute right? or is it qualified when there are competing rights, even if that competing right entails substantial sacrifice or inconvenience by one party? Which right is superior? the one with the most power? the one with the most long-term, fatal consequence? Does a first choice: to have sex constrain a second choice: to abort a life consequence? In other words, perhaps there is a right to choose abortion when there was no true consent: when sex was forced or was consented to under duress, fear, or trafficking.
3. See the possible abortion exception in footnote 2 above
4. Offering Up the Children at https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2010/06/offering-up-children.html
5. Perhaps read or listen to: Beauty For Ashes by Joyce Meyer (Time 51:27 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrTvgFq89yQ ; Joyce Meyer - Brokenness and Wholeness Sermon 2017 (Time 1:48:30) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYVI9bPBagA ; Refuse to Be Trapped by Your Past - Joyce Meyer (2016) (Time 1:42:03 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WK1UrxQH0 ; (See, also, Isaiah 61).

*Image Attribution:
Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reborn_From_The_Ashes_(136679141).jpeg
File URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Reborn_From_The_Ashes_%28136679141%29.jpeg
Attribution: Benjamín Calatrava [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]

“The DOGS of War”

(or more precisely, “The GODS of War”)

In English, the dogs of war is a phrase spoken by Mark Antony in Act 3, Scene 1, line 273 of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Cry 'Havoc!,' and let slip the dogs of war."¹

Neither Shakespeare nor Plutarch, his probable source, would have understood how apt that phrase and the “anagram” (DOGS) would prove, particularly beginning in the 19th Century² and now escalated to unbelievable proportions as GODS in our 21st Century.

And, it is doubtful, WE will ever understand:

» the dire state of our world—of our idolatry and gods;
» the machinations and secret combinations of the many without conscience who pursue and protect power and gain at any and every cost; or
» the cryptic words of prophecy,

until WE understand and admit what underpins (and helps explain) them all, being

▪ Guns
▪ Oil
▪ Drugs
▪ Sex

Could these four prove a layered, intertwining dimension of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse?³

Guns: Behold a déjà vu historical reality: the guy with the advanced, fastest, and most weapons wins⁴—BUT for the guys manufacturing, selling, or profiting in weapons, the goal is a “balance of weapons-power.” If no one can permanently win, then war (or more subtlety and preferably, proxy-wars) can go on forever, necessitating the production and consumption of more and more weapons (not to mention of oil, gas, etc.), thus preserving:

»  profits of war;
»  perpetual clean-ups and reconstructions;
»  perpetual (and increasing) funding of Military Industrial/Intelligence Complexes (MIICs) and their contractors;
»  surreptitious selling of patents, trade-secrets, weapons, materials & minerals for private profit.

Why, indeed, would weaponizers and profiteers want an end to war when war is the most lucrative business imaginable⁵? Remember the threat: “I will buy up armies and navies, [false priests who oppress] and reign with blood and horror on this earth.”⁶

Oil: The exposés of what has been done (and often suppressed) about crimes, corruptions, and deceptions engaged in, in the pursuit of oil, gas, and minerals are numerous and known by those who care to know. The treasures extracted from the veins of mother earth still govern world affairs, economics, and conflict. Here is a 2-part documentary about the obsessive, psychopathic pursuit of power and control (via energy markets) to create an oligarchy⁷ or oiligarchy as Corbett terms it:

How and Why Big Oil Conquered the World
https://www.corbettreport.com/bigoil/

Is it not incredibly ironic that the $1,000.00 loan to John D. Rockefeller (JDR) that eventually led⁸ to the founding of the soon-to-be monopolistic Standard Oil company was given to JDR (late 1850s) by his snake-oil salesman father, William Avery Rockefeller (WAR), aka “Devil Bill”⁹? JDR's apparent co-founder of Standard Oil was also WAR (William Avery Rockefeller, Jr.). Could the gods of irony be any more transparent? Could there be any greater vehicle to fund the agenda of total domination and control than controlling the world's energy sectors? even the forthcoming, so-called, green ones?

Drugs: Why do we have such a drug crisis? Could it be because the powers-that-be are not fighting drugs, but pretending to—allowing only the selective prosecution of low-level dealers or unauthorized/uncooperative high-level competitors? In suppressed truth, the dominating powers are participating in and protecting the growth, manufacture, and running of drugs in every conceivable way for massive profit. They trade weapons for drugs, overtly or secretly weaponizing even so-called enemies in the process. The drug-running through Mena Arkansas was only the tip of an iceberg that still seeks to hide reality, accountability, and a host of sins and sinners under the pejorative “conspiracy theory.” But the warning and exposing voices are too numerous to discount. If only WE would allow ourselves to see and hear the reality: Drug-running is helping fund MIICs, private contractors, and black-ops that are tearing our world apart. The justification of doing bad things for good purpose—fighting socialist/communist ideologies—is pure fraud and self-deception¹⁰ as the very ones who “justify” are the same ones surreptitiously selling or allowing the sale of materials, weapons, and technology to their alleged “enemies” often for drugs—then selling the drugs (through criminal affiliations) to their own “expendable” citizens. In the end, what does drug-running and war exacerbate but disease, famine, death, and conquest of body and soul?

Sex: The pillage, rape, and plunder of humanity has forever been the legacy of war, BUT in these latter-days of surveillance technology, sex has also become the greatest entrapment/blackmail weapon ever wielded to puppeteer kings/queens, princes, presidents, PMs, popes, cardinals, priests, generals, politicians, bankers, producers, actors, and a myriad other useful human assets. Over the years, many moral taboos have fallen victim to prevalence till we have come to the last taboo: pedophilia. And so the gods and dogs of war continue, creating more and more orphans and other victims of crime and chaos to feed power, greed, and the last taboo.

Where is the nation? where are the people? who will reject the gods of war? who will NEVER “let slip the dogs of war” for the sake of power and profit? Where are the presidents, politicians, broadcasters, citizens with courage?

Where is the resounding voice of WE, THE PEOPLE???

--------------------------------/
1. Dogs of War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dogs_of_war_(phrase) . If one is open to truths about power and gain agendas and actions, take up George Webb on Twitter or YouTube, e.g.. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrQ-wHKVi0JDWjQGcuoYnew. He speaks of the dogs and gods of war in several of his podcasts and was one of the inspirations for this post.
2. Opium Wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
3. Four Horseman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse
4. (except when the real God intervenes)
5. Not only for the manufacture and sale of high- and low-tech weapons, but for all the GDP generated by clean-up and reconstruction, often by the same corps or subsidiaries of those who did the initial destruction—not to mention the economic chaos that allows high-rollers to roll-in and buy-up distressed land and assets at rock-bottom prices—especially if the land is oil rich or along a proposed oil/gas pipeline.
6. Line delivered by the actor playing Satan in a dramatic script of the LDS Church. The text in square brackets is their revision from the former (circa 170 year-old) text “popes and priests.”
7. ("a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes." Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oligarchy)
8. (via a series of business ventures, including substantial profits from the civil war, and in 1863 building an oil refinery. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller)
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rockefeller_Sr.
10. Doctrine and Covenants | Section 10:25–28 ~ For Example: Yea, he [Satan] saith unto them: Deceive and lie in wait to catch, that ye may destroy; behold, this is no harm. And thus he flattereth them, and telleth them that it is no sin to lie that they may catch a man in a lie, that they may destroy him. And thus he flattereth them, and leadeth them along until he draggeth their souls down to hell; and thus he causeth them to catch themselves in their own snare. And thus he goeth up and down, to and fro in the earth, seeking to destroy the souls of men. Verily, verily, I say unto you, wo be unto him that lieth to deceive because he supposeth that another lieth to deceive, for such are not exempt from the justice of God.