 
### Outlaw Visions

By Francis X. Kroncke

Copyright 2013 Francis X. Kroncke

Smashwords Edition

Cover design by Mikki Fattoruso, mfdesignstudio.com

Martin Luther King

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind...I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response...which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.

....

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action...If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response... The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

"Beyond Vietnam," 1967

John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven...

Imagine all the people living for today...

Imagine there's no countries...

Imagine all the people living life in peace...

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You, you may say

I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

"Imagine," 1973
Preface

_I chose to go to prison_. To protest against the Vietnam War I not only raided government offices and stole and destroyed Selective Service files of men about to be inducted into military service and sent to Vietnam but I publically and blatantly flipped-off the government by raising the clenched fist of _Resist!_ It was an era of American savagery when shouting "Resist illegitimate authority!" and attacking the government was the only way to be both sane and patriotic. With others, I destroyed tens of thousands of 1-A draft files of men about to be inducted into military service—in a paper based world, this made them disappear from the Selective Service System. I also personally stole, from the state's Director of Selective Service's office, near three hundred blank draft cards and classification rubber stamps and took them to Toronto enabling military deserters, draft resisters, and war exiles to return to the US with official proof of having fulfilled their military obligation. Every day I defied and damned the government as best I could. In public and private I preached and taught...roared _Resist!_ on college campuses, to families in the pews, at protest rallies, and I joined with returning Vietnam Veterans Against the War to attack the government's war machine at every turn. Little known to many, it was the returning Vietnam veterans who blew us away with their battlefield experiences and got us war resisters off our individual and collective asses to up the ante, to bring the battlefront home, into the streets and suites, especially into the draft offices all across America.

From 1968 onward, hundreds of draft boards were being raided across the country, in vast metropolitan areas and small rural towns. Indicative of that fact was that, during this time, in backwater Minnesota's federal court district over half of the pending cases were for draft violations. This latter fact is an untold story, but only a sideline note to the one told here.

By the time I, as one of the "Minnesota 8," was caught in July of 1970 by J. Edgar Hoover's finest—who bumbled about trying to infiltrate the anti-war Movement like Keystone Kops led by the Three Stooges—the government didn't know what to do with us. Quietly bury us and keep us out of the public eye? After all, at the time, the (in)famous "Chicago 8" courtroom debacle had shown the feds that even if they could get a conviction against radicals that they would lose their case in the media. All praise to Yippie, Abbie Hoffman and Black Panther, Bobbie Seale! But they gave it another go. Charged us with "sabotage of the national defense," a ten year sentence. Plus set a $50,000 bail which kept us in jail for a week as the streets of Minneapolis teemed with protesters and rioters, more arrests, until the bail was lowered. But you can anticipate the ending. Realize, I chose to go to prison. _Now how fucking stupid was that?_

It was me against the United States of America, and in the end I lost big time—on the legal front, obviously, but more tellingly as to mental health, my sanity. I lost any reasonable sense of a normal vision of life. As I will relate, I lost both my Country and my Church—everything that enabled me to see and sense myself as a normal, good, or contributing member of society. I was forced to envision myself as an outlaw—to face and accept that my personal vision of reality was not only skewed but a danger to others and so punishable by imprisonment.

_Yet, I survived._ How? In short, in prison's darkness I came to grasp that how I was raised to see myself and to envision reality was, in itself, a powerful cultural vision that had blinded me to deeper truths and realities about who I was and about how the world worked. I began to see differently, to be awakened by outlaw visions—which is the story I will tell you here.

Now, remember the times: My five year maximum sentence elated "Tricky Dick" Nixon—"Leader of the Free World!"—who was soon disgraced as a bungling crook and rightly judged as corrupt to the core. I went into prison in the spring of 1972 just in time to catch the Evening News report that for the first time ever a United States Attorney General, John N. Mitchell—"America's Top Cop!"—was being indicted for crimes. It was academic at the time to ask, Who are the real criminals? History has exonerated me and condemned them. I find little solace in that judgment.

So, in all, I kicked some government ass, aided in the ending of the Vietnam War, and stood proudly upon my conscientious convictions. Good for me, right? _Fuck!_ I'm still classified as a "violent felon" for destroying paper and not killing humans. In the current war of paranoia, I'd be listed as a domestic terrorist, but that's not of concern right now. Why? Because when I heard "Five years in a federal penitentiary," another battle was just beginning for me, right here on American soil. Now this is when the story of "Outlaw Visions" really begins.

Like a green, battlefield "grunt" on his first foray in-country in Vietnam, in the spring of 1972, I found myself locked-down in a dangerous, upside-down world of random brutality and deep darkness that no one had ever told me even existed. Sure, at the time, I thought that I knew a lot— _Ha!_ I had been in the seminary and the monastery, held a Masters degree in theology, felt the cold smack of an FBI gun at the back of my neck, defended myself as attorney pro se at trial and before the appellate court...yeah, _blah blah!_...but nothing and no one prepared me for entering the hellish zone where captives rage against their captors in a sector of darkness "where everything human is soon absent." No one and nothing had prepared me for _Lights out!_ and a free-fall plunge into a darkness so primal that it can only be fittingly described as "mythic."

I chose being an outlaw—a "common criminal"—but truly awoke to myself as a "mythic outlaw." One who had stepped outside of the cultural, mythic visions of both America and Christianity—outside the secular mythic vision of "American Exceptionalism!" and the religious mythic vision of "Christus Victor!" and "Onward Christian Soldiers!" Today, I remain an outlaw visionary, continuing to _Resist illegitimate authority!_ But my outlaw vision has shifted in scope and practice because the _Vietnam War of my youth never-ended_ and has, for nearly fifty years, mutated into one war after another, plunging the world into not just a specific war, such as the Iraqi War, but into _Endless Warfare_. This is the core reality of the frightening mythic vision that thrives under the banner of brutish "globalization." Endless Warfare is the dominant global vision that is source to the predatory war that is being waged not only against Earth's peoples but the Earth, herself.

As to practice, where once my personal witness of _Resist!_ was mainly focused on changing political and social values and institutions, prison upended me most profoundly as I realized that _I was imprisoning myself!_ I was doing so because I was still seeing the world the way my captors were. That I, as they, were making present a vision of life where both of us peered at certain fellow human beings and envisioned them as an odious Other and as vile enemy. I realized that I was keeping alive and even promoting the dominant global vision of brutish globalization's predatory Endless Warfare. _Ooops!_ and _Aarrggh!_

How then to enable myself and others to see differently, to re-vision and envision anew? As with my effort to end the Vietnam War, the _answer was me_. I had to _Resist myself!_ I had to become an outlaw to my own lawful world— to look hard and critically at both America's and Christianity's mythic visions and open myself to the emergence of a new vision. One whose anthem John Lennon had already written—to _Imagine!_ I had to plot and effect an escape, scale the barbed wire fences of the secular and religious prisons I myself had help erect! And become the change I sought to see in the world. I had to _re-imagine myself_ —become a mythic outlaw, since only then could I be ready to embrace you as not Other or my enemy in Endless Warfare.

_We humans face a perilous choice_. We can either continue to war endlessly and ravage the Earth in terms of people and resources or we can rise to the challenge and imagine and embody a fresh and vigorous vision to _Resist!_ predatory, brutish globalization. We can opt to blind ourselves to the realities of this vision of globalized Endless Warfare or we can discipline ourselves to see anew—as I challenge you, to look hard and critically at both America's and Christianity's mythic visions and open ourselves to the emergence of a new vision...to stand and sing loudly the anthem John Lennon has written for you and me. We can dream as both Martin Luther King and John Lennon called us to. We can _Imagine!_ and begin to live out what I found is already an emerging global vision, that of the "Earthfolk."

My challenge to you, issued here in my elder years, is to embody this Earthfolk vision. Will you choose to become an outlaw visionary— _Resist!_ —and engage in the ongoing creation of the transforming and healing global vision of the Earthfolk who seek to dwell peacefully and comfortably at home on the living Earth?
Introduction

_Outlaw Visions_ : No one has ever written about "Outlaw Visions."

_Why me?_ Simply, I'm an outlaw—a criminal, classified as a violent felon. I served fourteen months in a federal prison on a five year sentence. I am federal inmate #8867-147.

_Why am I doing so?_ I hold that for your own sanity and the survival of the planet itself, you need to and must choose to become an outlaw visionary. My task is to enable you to grasp how you are presently living out a secular political and a spiritual religious vision that is destroying the Earth and its peoples through predatory, brutish globalization...and how to free yourself from its deathly grip. No small potatoes, eh?

_What is a vision?_ Off the top, you'd probably say that visions are experiences that people at the edges of society and sanity claim to have—folks like religious mystics or shamans or simply crazy people. As outlaws break the law of the land and violate social values and beliefs, putting _outlaw_ and _vision_ together is not much of a stretch. But "outlaw vision" does beg a critical question: What is a lawful vision? At its core, "vision" implies moving beyond, a breaking through but without any necessary judgment on whether the end result is good or bad. Here I forward a slightly different meaning to vision.

Within a culture, say Western culture, various societies develop what I call "Big Stories." A Big Story gives people in a society a sense of identity—say, as being Americans—by weaving together answers to life's most challenging questions. A Big Story answers Big Questions, such as Where do humans come from? Or, Why are we here on this planet? Or, Where are we going—as in, what is the purpose of life, itself? Or, How did we get here, in terms of who or what created us? The Big Answers are sometimes explained in religious language and imagery, e.g., the story of the Garden of Eden, which answers, among other questions, Who created us? As it does, Are men and women equal? Sometimes Big Story language is mythological and reads like a Marvel Comic's superhero tale. Here, gods and goddesses act in ways that explain human behavior, as it is the deities that guide or warp human actions. Human heroes are most often offspring of gods/goddesses who had sexual intercourse with humans, e.g., the famous Greek Trojan War hero, Achilles, who was considered physically invulnerable, a condition of his having a goddess mother and a kingly but human father.

More recently, from a historical perspective, the language and imagery of a Big Story may be inspired by empirical scientific facts and/or rational theories—this is the Big Story of Scientism. For example, the "Big Bang" describes the thundering cosmic explosion that explains the origin of everything. "Evolution" describes how life grew from simplicity to complexity, from one celled creatures to the human brain that, allegedly, has more cells than there are stars in the cosmos. Evolution also describes how all organic and inorganic entities are interconnected—a "web of Life." Yet it also forwards an End-of-Times tale (an apocalyptic and eschatological event) where all species will eventually expire, including humans, all dying in a solar system eventually burnt out and gone cold. Not unexpectedly, many of us hold Big Answers that mingle these differing explanatory approaches. So, your Answers might include the Garden of Eden story to explain the relationship between men and women, while holding to Evolution to explain how the world was created, and then cite the mythological battles among the gods and goddess to explain why there is violent conflict and evil in the world.

At times outlaw visions are blurry or delusional. At other times they enable those of us who judge ourselves as normal or mainstream to see with crystal clarity the limits and deficiencies of the Big Story's lawful vision that we have uncritically embraced. Yet, truth be told, most of us grow up barely aware of own vision(s), especially those of us who embrace the Big Story vision and values of the dominant society and culture—what I call the "ruling vision." Such a ruling vision often obscures and blinds us from seeing those right next to us who are living outside normalcy or the mainstream—who are living outlaw visions, that is, those you consider Other and enemy. At its best, an outlaw vision serves to show you how your lawful vision makes you "see through a glass, darkly." Nevertheless, since outlaw visions and visionaries challenge and violate the most treasured values of the ruling vision, both are rarely welcomed and usually suppressed or oppressed.

Notably, the outlaw visionary is typically rejected by or ejected from the ruling vision and mainstream society, and his outlaw vision ignored or condemned. Not untypically, the outlaw visionary has to pay a steep personal price for his insights—losing nearly everything: mental health, peace of mind, social status, even the support of his family. While he doesn't seek suffering, it is fairly common that insight from a new light emerges only after he has suffered...as he walks into the dark, shadow recesses of the ruling vision and experiences it horrors and terrors, is subjected to torture, torments, deprivations, humiliations, and degradations during what is aptly described as a "dark night of the soul." It is a cruel irony that the source for an outlaw vision is a numinous light that has been discovered in the darkest, most depraved sectors of a ruling vision.

That said, right off, here is my outlaw visionary challenge: Can you accept this as true—that the light cast by every ruling vision also casts a shadow of similar size and depth? That the ruling vision you currently embrace might be preventing you from seeing what is actually right in front of your eyes—to wit, that the Emperor, truly, has no clothes on? Such is a first premise of Outlaw Visions—that ruling visions enable us to see clearly by throwing a light on reality that simultaneously blinds us to what is in the shadow sectors of reality. In this vein, all ruling visions have accompanying outlaw visions...and all outlaw visions shed light on what may become a new ruling vision.

Back to, _Why me?_ It took me decades to answer that for myself. As I stated "I chose to go to prison." Clearly, as I started "doing time," I did not fully know what prison was about. But ten years after getting parole, the first rays of the Earthfolk vision threw light upon my experience of having become a _subhuman_ while in prison. So, the answer is—because I am a subhuman. And, the answer also is—because you are _not_ a subhuman. **My challenge is that for you to become fully human you need to embrace your subhumanity.**

Unintentionally, I crossed the line of social sanity and human worth as I became federal inmate #8867-47. While many humans are treated as subhumans—Americans incarcerate fellow Americans at a higher rate than any other country—the telling fact is that I was not supposed to have had this experience! Not in light of my being white, male, highly educated, and middle class. As I will relate, I had been raised to be the quintessential "good boy." Altar-boy, seminarian, young theologian...a walking, talking poster child for both Catholicism and the American Way. In my elder years, I spied three pathways that I trod—as an outlaw, a subhuman, and an Earthfolk. It is the outlaw vision and my experience of being a subhuman that will enable you to grasp why you must become an outlaw visionary—not the other two pathways.

Right now, I anticipate that you have not the slightest idea of what a subhuman is, nor that you want to become one! But that is why I am telling my story...because, most likely, I am you and you are me: either _male_ or _white_ or _educated_ or _middle-class_. And you can only save the world if you become subhuman...but let's begin that journey.

On _Pathway # 1 "Outlaw,"_ my claim to outlaw visions stems from my personally being cast out of society and condemned to live on the Inside (as criminals call prison), at what I call the ruling vision's mythic core—this is _Pathway #2 "Subhuman."_ It is the insights of this Inside/Outside journey that I bring to you. I aim to unravel the mythic story that is source to your present ruling vision of reality...and then unfold a new Big Story with its own mythic accounts that, hopefully, will become the source for your embrace of a new vision of reality— _Pathway #3 "Earthfolk."_

Globalization and the Earthfolk

_Sanity and Survival._ In a way my life is summed up by, "All we are saying is give peace a chance!" All my life I've been trying to stop people from murdering one another. I've been failing miserably. Yet, when as an elder I went back on campus (2006-2008) to promote a play about my Vietnam era anti-war trial, "Peace Crimes: the _Minnesota 8_ vs. the war," I was stunned and amazed to find that in so many ways these young activists were my visionary grandchildren.

I found that among today's youth the mingling of the passion and insights of Martin Luther King with John Lennon's vision was stirring up a storm of change. Young activists were engaged in a slate of human service and social justice causes which sought to create compassionate communities both locally and globally. The main topic on the young activists' agenda was the question about the _survival of the planet_. In my day it was just one war—Vietnam. Today, the concern was whether the human species will insanely kill itself by unleashing an ecological apocalypse and/or destroy the whole planet through creating a nuclear winter.

_Whole planet._ As a Sixties peace activist I was concerned about America. I knew hardly anything about Vietnam or the Far East when the war started. Today's youth are planetary citizens. In my day there was "America" and American goods, foods, clothing, educational system, and the like. Today there is simply "planet Earth." Rarely is something purely American. What is being sought is a sane plan for everyone living together. Not surprisingly, the struggle that is the special focus among the young is, "Whither globalization?"

_Globalization_. Whenever it actually began for certain, today, the main worldwide dynamic is globalization. This is a loose term that includes obvious changes such as the world-wide-web that links anyone willing to be a node on its Net. But the deeper changes concern the stories we are telling ourselves about what it means to be human and what it takes to have a healthy and meaningful human life. In a way, as the previous major wars were called World Wars, Vietnam was the first Global War in that it was telecommunicated into every home or hut with an antenna everywhere around the planet. But consider this—I failed, with others in the anti-war Movement, to stop this war because it was more than a globally telecommunicated military event. Rather it was the _first war of globalization_.

We did not grasp that we were opposing the first wave of a globalization movement which sought dominion over all Earth's people. Notably, this dominion was not just militaristic, it was cultural. Yet—and this was the first sign that this was a globalizing dominion—it was not simply a quest to make the world culturally Western or American or Judeo-Christian. In fact the contrary was true, that is, the war opened the West to the East and a wave of cultural tolerance swamped every American sector: economic, educational, religious, etc. People spoke about being "citizens of the world," that is, _American+something more_ than that. As the Internet arose and the globe became laced by its technological Web, a new definition of reality as "virtual" described a new "space" which was at once hardwired to the old space, now called off-line, and which put you on-line as an agent in the virtual realm of hyperspace. You now had simultaneous identities—off-line and online; real and virtual. _Wow!_ Whatever it was, when you entered globalization's virtual reality you realized that it was transforming every and all aspects of human culture...but into what?

**Is globalization a brutish, predatory or a creative movement?** Does it seek dominion through conquest or can it become an enabling, humanizing movement? The answers to these and related globalization questions depend upon the story we tell ourselves about the purpose, meaning and value of human life, that is, our story of human origin. In this light, I hold that globalization is presenting a new mythic story of origin, one that is replacing the dominant Western biblical story of Genesis. More critically, I hold that it is you who can and should imagine this new story of origin. This is where my Outlaw Visions comes into play.

_Outlaw Visions_ ' three Pathways take you on a journey that wends through monastic hallways, trial courtrooms, jail and prison cells, and onto campuses to engage with today's young activists. You will follow me as I climbed to the mountaintop, shouted "Peace! Peace!"—and heard society's judgment: "Criminal!" We then fall and descend into the hellish sectors of prison's darkness where I existed as a subhuman. Finally, we listen to young campus activists as they profess a profoundly hopeful and powerful vision of the preciousness of all human life that guides their efforts at directing the globalization movement.

I use personal narrative and accounts of intimate prison experiences so that you can enter into realms of human thought and feeling that are dark, at times heretical, even possibly evil to you. You then descend into the terrifying prison sector "where everything human is soon absent." Next, you learn how to ascend from the dark sector into the sunlight sector and develop an innovative "Earthfolk" vision that enables you to dwell peacefully and comfortably at home on the Living Earth. The journey concludes with an upbeat invitation to engage a series of ritual practices that will enable you to transform you own subhumanness and envision yourself and others as one of Earthfolk's precious beloveds.

**Pathway#1: Outlaw** relates how an altar boy and young monk became a federal criminal. My transformation had three sources. 1) In my faithful obedience to the radical moral challenges issued by my Church. 2) My faith as formed by my family, especially my father. 3) The revolutionary theological vision of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., which led to my embrace of nonviolence and pacifism. Then, I present my "peacemaking visions" which drew ridicule from the prosecutor and stark condemnation from Church and State magistrates but was all I had to give as patrimony to my sons. Notably, this is a Pathway whose depth you can plumb through sympathy and empathy. Nothing recounted along the way should shock you.

**Pathway#2: Subhuman** recounts my entry into federal prison—the _Inside_ —and my post-prison journey as a lost soul on a ten year Dark Night of the Soul wandering. My experiences on this Pathway might be near impossible for you to fully appreciate because such requires more than sympathy or empathy. To properly walk this Pathway requires an effort on your part to _become me_.

Prison was not what I expected nor what I anticipate you believe it is. I found it to be an enduring institution that served to keep me and you from knowing about the physicality and operations of the Shadow realm. Whereas "Shadow realm" is probably a semi-poetic or popular psychological concept for you, it is actually that part of everyday life which is right in front of you but you do not see. It is as invisible as are the thousands of ex-convicts—like me!—who walk through your neighborhood and sit down next to you at the movie theater.

I describe my becoming a subhuman, an institutional number—8867-147, and being The Man's Bitch. You hear that the judge ruled that I was an "irrelevant and immaterial" human. With that verdict he effectively showed the world that I was no more than a babbling, incoherent fool. Ironically, being so humiliated and devalued, arguably, forced me to listen more sympathetically and attentively to inmate stories and to empathetically share their raw, sometimes savage, emotions. These inmate stories are the factual and inspirational bedrock for my Outlaw Visions.

_Here is where I might lose you._ There are three sets of **"Rung stories"** written as first-person accounts which might be a bit too raw and savage for you. I make no apologies. Prison's revelation was that unless I experienced my own subhumanness that I would never become a real human person. To enable you to become me, I tell these stories—which I carved out of my flesh and spirit.

As if the Rung stories won't be hard enough for you to navigate, you then hear that in prison I encountered a Shadow Mother who "kept me alive, although not loving me." This numinous She I found in the extreme sector of prison's Shadow realm— _where everything human is soon absent_. It is She, however, who I also found present in the Garden of Eden as I listened to the biblical tradition with inmate, subhuman, and Shadow senses. It is my veneration of Her that turned me into a Outlaw Visionary.

**Pathway#3: Earthfolk** While back on campus (2005-2008) to promote the "Peace Crimes" play, in discussions with young activists I heard emerge a set of visionary words and images that were inclusive, universalistic, ecological, and above all, about justice and the acceptance of all people as children in one human family. Yet, I discerned a growing split between two ways to embody this emerging vision. One I described as being "Earthpeople." The other as being "Earthfolk." The critical difference was in the activist's sense of Mother Earth. Was she alive, a goddess, and worthy of veneration? Was She a Living Earth? Or was the phrase simply symbolic and conveyed nothing other than the biological and geological facts that all humans lived on the same planet? I realized that my prison experiences, my Dark Night, and my Outlaw Visions—with the call to experience one's subhumanness—could provide those emerging as Earthfolk with a pathway and set of practices to learn how to discover their Mother and venerate Her.

While I claim that you should embrace the Earthfolk vision to protect your own sanity and ensure the survival of the planet itself, I make no bones about it that Pathway #3 is a more difficult, even treacherous, segment of your journey than the other two. You will need to be sympathetic and empathetic as you prepare yourself to discover your Shadow subhuman self. I offer a discipline and a set of practices for you to follow to begin opening yourself to embracing your own subhumanness and walk in the Shadow realm. I further offer ways to use the Rung stories to meditatively descend into and ascend out of the Shadow realm where you touch your subhumanness and transform yourself into a real human person. Only at the moment you discover your Shadow Mother and come to venerate Her will you begin to embody the Earthfolk vision. Know however that the unfolding of the Earthfolk vision is not solely and simply an act of consciously seeing and sensing the world in a certain way, rather, conversely, it is also you being seen and sensed by the world in a certain way. The challenge facing you is to live in such a way that others see and sense you as an Earthfolk.

Pathway #1: Outlaw
Chapter 1: How did I become an outlaw?

A: _Through a ritual of peacemaking—raiding Selective Service draft board offices._

Near midnight on July 10, 1970, the FBI arrested me and seven others during three raids on Selective Service draft boards across Minnesota. The press dubbed us "The Minnesota 8." Six months before, in one night, we had pulled off the largest draft raid in American history, destroying tens of thousands of files in two centralized facilities holding over forty-five boards. For that raid we called ourselves "The Beaver 55." The FBI was steamed; the anti-war Resistance community, ecstatic. This time, by morning, I and the others were indicted on "sabotage of the national defense." We faced ten years in federal prison.

The _Minnesota 8_ were fairly typical white, middle-class, Mid-western American youths. To a man, we were also college graduates and over-achievers who sought, in different chosen careers, to realize the American Dream. Although media depictions often stereotyped "student radicals" and "draft resisters" as degenerate, dope-smoking, lazy drop-outs who conspired in communes where they collected welfare, espoused Free Sex and Marxism, the opposite was more accurate. One of the 8's mothers struck a chord that rings true to this day.

"Look, my Peter is just an average kid who realized an obvious thing— that he can't kill. He isn't a kook or a weirdo—he's my son. Can't you people look into your hearts and realize that when kids like my Peter do things like this that something is seriously wrong with the country?" (Mary Simmons' interview on, "Dialogue" a program of KDWB, St. Paul, produced by Connie Goldman and emceed by Earl Craig, 1971)

When I first studied the Vietnam War, I did not disapprove. Over time I embraced pacifism and obtained a legal deferment as a Conscientious Objector. I served two years of Alternative Service, so fulfilling my military obligation. Slowly, ever so slowly, I came to realize that "something is seriously wrong with the country" and felt the urgent need for more bold and risky acts of nonviolent Resistance—acts of civil disobedience to publicly "Resist illegitimate authority!"

Although I had obtained a Masters degree in visions and worked as a lay Catholic theologian, it took me even more time to passionately embrace nonviolent civil disobedience as the only practical mode of moral action. Like Martin Luther King, I struggled against an easy acceptance of the linkage between social injustices inside America and America's Vietnam War, but in time the linkage became crystal clear. Yet, central to my personal development is my forthright admission that my Resistance was not simply a matter of enlightened self-discovery. No, I actually had to be blown-away by a Vietnam veteran. In 1969, Gordy, a Marine veteran, told me about his battlefield conversion.

In Vietnam Gordy was a Section Leader and Forward Observer, India Company—the "Igniting Eye"—Third Battalion, Fifth Marines. The gist of his story:

"We burned as many homes as we had matches for. You were a better Marine if you did more fantastic things, if you could burn more hootches... The meaner you could be, the more gooks you could kill was the whole idea." (Trial transcript—"TT")

Gordy told me that now he woke up at night with battlefield flashbacks and attacked his wife. You can imagine how flabbergasted—and frightened—I was. At that time neither of us knew about post-traumatic stress syndrome. What happened was that this medaled Veteran influenced and transformed me more than I did him. Before we first met I was a peacenik, afterwards a war criminal. How did that happen?

Gordy told me, as he did a judge and jury later as a witness at my trial, that during one flashback, while he was setting fire to a Vietnam village, he had a battlefield conversion."

"In dealing with myself, coming back and thinking I was right. And thinking that the things I had done were right because it was what I had been taught in boot camp, and then viewing it from the other side, instead of a gook, it was a human being. Instead of a hootch, it was a home. That really socked it to my head. It really blew my mind. Because I have never thought of a hootch being a home, it was an old grass hootch. And they were peasants, they weren't people." (TT)

What blew my mind was not his realization of the oneness of all humanity because I already believed that everyone was a child of God. What knocked me off my chair was the emotional intensity of what he was saying. If I would ever claim to have had a prophetic revelation laid at my feet, this was it. The thunderbolt simplicity of what Gordy confessed changed me forever. It forced me to surrender the complexities of theological abstractions and academic verbiage and yield to the passions of my heart.

After listening to Gordy, what more facts or truths would I have to ponder before I formed my conscience of Resistance? I mean, another human being comes into your personal space and says, Hey, I went through this experience called Boot Camp. See, I didn't know it at the time, but it was a religious experience. Every day the DIs chanted and we chanted with them. "Kill!" I went in a kid and came out a killer. I mean, Man, I put on that uniform and there's nothing I can't do. Least not nothing in the Nam. Dig it, Man, I'm gonna burn down your house. I'm gonna kill your kids. I'm gonna rape your wife. I'm gonna blow you apart, Man!... I sat there near shit-in-my-pants freaked out: This guy's a walking time bomb!

Should I pretend that Gordy didn't scare the bejesus out of me? That the other stressed-out veterans I began to regularly meet didn't make me lock the bathroom door behind me when they were around? I liked these guys; admired many. But they were not totally in control. I was spooked! Try to grasp what it was like to sit behind my safe desk in the Catholic students' Newman Center, in a room lined with books and books about books, and have someone, anyone, come in and tell you that on another day he had gotten up in the morning, said his prayers, got with his squad and spent the day burning down people's homes, destroying food caches, and even killing people? He then went back, ate chow, smoked dope, knelt by his cot: "Now I lay me down..." and went to sleep.

Gordy's visit wasn't a public relations or an information sharing junket. He was in serious trouble. His night-time flashbacks were family horror shows. He wanted something from me; that's why he came. He didn't just want to understand what happened or why. He wanted something to stop happening: he wanted the war to end. He wanted peace of mind and soul. And, he was asking me how I was going to help him.

Gordy's demand, "We've got to stop the story from being told. We have to shut the system down." I knew what he meant—bring the battlefield home!

Previously I had sought various measured ways to act. I had written numerous letters, preached sermons and marched. But Gordy challenged me to do more than act according to my conscience. He came seeking spiritual counsel after hearing me preach. He wanted me to preach not just in church but on the streets, in the suites, and inside draft boards! Who else, he sensed, to bring the spiritual truth revealed through his battlefield conversion to all people? As I later argued in court: to heal America and vets like Gordy it was necessary for me to raid draft boards.

Raiding a draft board was my ritual of peacemaking—an attempt to bring peace to myself, to my country, but most of all to Gordy. That is my story. The draft raid broadcasted my religious conviction—the truth that my God is a peacemaking God, not a God of war-making. But it did more than that—through the nonviolent draft raid God became present in the minds and hearts of others who heard His call, "Blessed are the peacemakers."

Why do I raid?

A: I raid "to be in the presence of God."

When I burgled draft boards I was seeking to be faithful to the radical spirituality being championed by the Roman Catholic Church at its Vatican Council II. Pope John XXIII was opening the Church's tightly shuttered windows, letting in the light of day from the outside world of other religions and secular societies. He issued "Pacem in Terris" ("Peace on Earth") and the Council proclaimed, "The holy People of God shares also in Christ's prophetic office." The Documents of Vatican II spoke about "building up the international community." They issued warnings about the apocalyptic perils of "total war" and the need to work toward "the avoidance of war" and "curbing the savagery of war." I was cowed by the Council's challenging call for "the total banning of war, and international action for avoiding war." Most of all, I pondered their mandate, "It is our clear duty, then, to strain every muscle as we work for the time when all war can be completely outlawed by international consent." (My italics.)

After meeting with Gordy, I closed the door and sat back down at my desk. The walls closed in on me, crumpled me. I felt so small, so inconsequential; powerless. I glanced over and scanned the shelves, not just books but my beloved books—I love these books! Then I got up and took a few, a bible here, a text of Aquinas there, the Documents of Vatican II and slammed them on the floor: Lies! I rushed out onto the street, gasping.

No more books, no more sermons, no more marches—one song rang through my ears as anthem, "We're on the eve of destruction!"

I walked across the Washington Street bridge that connects the U of Minnesota's east and west banks. Westward was the heartland of radicals, activists, hippies—and at its center the Twin Cities Draft Information Center (TCDIC). There I met men who had just returned from prison. Others with court cases pending. Several with sentences hanging over their heads. All were active Resisters. Humorously, I was instantly pigeonholed as TCDIC's "resident theologian" but like Gordy these men didn't care about why I was Resisting, just that I would Do it!

On the Beaver 55 raid I burgled the State Director's office—a rare treasure. Since Minnesota is a rural area, the Director, for administrative efficiency, centralized scores of rural draft offices in the St. Paul metropolitan Post Office where he maintained his own office. The Director was the last court of appeal for assigning draft status, say, for deciding whether someone got a 4-F deferment for being physically unfit or 1-0 and being granted Conscientious Objector status. So, unaware of the war booty in his top desk draw, I opened it and Thank you, Jesus! I confiscated hundreds of blank draft cards and official stamps and personally carried them to Canada to enable the silent return of exiled war resisters. Have valid draft card...scoot back across the border. The FBI soon knew: I stole and destroyed 1-A files. I acted with all my heart and protested with every aspect of my mind and will. I followed my conscience. I destroyed paper property, not human bodies. I drew symbolic blood from ripped draft cards. I put my life in harm's way to prevent harm to others.

"Ripping paper! Why did you think the government cared about that?" A fair question, often posed. Consider this: You take the Torah, Koran, New Testament, Bhagavad-Gita or any other sacred scripture, stand on a street corner where you then defecate on it or burn it—What happens? Or, if you take the sacred breads of the Eucharist and do likewise, what happens? Some people might curse you. Others might throw something at you. Or, everyone just laughs and walks away.

Now consider this: You lift a wafer-thin piece of paper the size of a credit card from your wallet. You set it on fire and raise your arm high. What happens? They drop out of the sky, jump out from behind the bushes, scramble from their agent provocateur positions in the crowd, throw you to the ground, knee you in the small of your back, yank and wrest your arms around to handcuff you. Quickly and expertly they right you, drag and rush you away from the crowd, off the streets into a waiting unmarked police van. I ask, What is it we Americans hold more sacred than the draft card?

Was the judge answering "Nothing is more sacred than a draft card!" when he said:

"While these defendants are not criminals, in the sense that robbers for instance are, whose crime is that they take money or property from others, they are criminals in an equally, if not more serious sense, because their criminal conduct strikes not just at the pocketbook of others but at the very foundation of government and therefore at the security and well being of all." (TT. My emphasis.)

Just pause a moment here. Destroying paper files strikes at the "very foundation of government"? If so, isn't the Selective Services System, clearly then, a bedrock governmental institution? Not just an optional or secondary or temporary war time institution but one that must operate or else the foundation of government starts to collapse?

Ritual of Peacemaking

Why do I raid? To be at that site, that place, a nondescript file room where the power that transforms life into death is manifest and present. I enter draft boards to perform a ritual of peacemaking—to bless the paper symbols of human lives; consecrate them. I intone Peace! as I tear and rend asunder their symbolic bodies; freeing captive souls.

Willie Sutton was alleged to have said that he robbed banks because that was where the money was. I raided draft boards because that's where the ritual of war-making makes manifest the killer's God. I wanted to make manifest the peacemaking God.

There is simply no other place to go. No other physical location anywhere in America like the draft board. It is the war machine's sacred spot; the secular State's Holy of Holies.

Of course at the time I was speaking Catholic and expressed myself in traditional theological language, innovating a bit by calling draft raids "socio-political sacramental acts." When hearing this phrase, many fellow Resisters shook their heads, some confounded, others laughing, all in agreement with my final conclusion, Let's raid! For me, the traditional Catholic seven sacraments were private rituals and to counter the Draft a public sacrament had to be ritualized or I would have no way to properly respond to Gordy's battlefield experience.

I needed to possess these sacred draft cards—this sole piece of paper that every eighteen year old male must register to possess and so become possessed by the killing god. "Possessed"—once you realize that registering with the Selective Service System (in war or peacetime) is the only act that every American male must do under threat of exile or imprisonment then you sense the sacral power that this special piece of flimsy paper possesses...and endows the possessor with. Like the tabernacle with the Eucharistic hosts, the draft office contained America's sacred cultural symbols. Once possessed, these paper symbols sirenically lure the average guy to "step over the line" at the Induction Center and in so doing transform himself from Joe Citizen into a socio-political killing weapon of the God of war.

Understanding what registering with the Selective Service System really means is necessary for understanding why I cobbled together this hyphenated phrase, "socio-political sacramental act." As noted, registering for the draft is the only act that every American male at eighteen must do. There are no exceptions. If you are mentally ill, a novice in the monastery, Joe Athlete, deaf and dumb, a paraplegic—your physical condition is not relevant. If you are eighteen and breathing then you must register or face exile or imprisonment. Now obviously there are deferments. But that's only after you register. Myself, I was in my Franciscan monk's robes when the Novice Master drove me into a small Indiana post office to register. No exceptions; some deferments. While registering is an act that bestows social and political identity, its potency lies in the fact that it is the necessary and culturally defining way for a male to lay claim to being a full-bodied American.

Aristotle said, "We make war that we may live in peace." I claimed, as did all Resisters, that these files expressed America's religious truths. It is religious in the sense that America grounds its national identity in the claim that it is "One nation under God." Likewise its currency proclaims, "In God We trust." So the 1-A draft files symbolically represented America's religious truth that the act of killing is a foundational and sacral act of the State.

Consider: A draft card endows you with godly power. You are authorized to have the God-like experience of killing someone and not being held accountable! Although you commit the primal crime of fratricide, namely Cain slaying Abel, you are to have no guilt. I knew that the average citizen, at first, would consider my claim about the sacral power of draft cards to be an exaggeration, but my insight into this paper card's power was further validated by the FBI's own action after the Beaver 55 raid. It was headline news that J. Edgar Hoover sent in over one-hundred agents to track us down. No doubt, the FBI knew the power of the 1-A card—and the sacrilege we committed by destroying them.

More than once I broke into America's Holy of Holies. Trespassed on sacred ground. Blasphemously prayed to and invoked the God of peacemaking. Stood before the face of the God of killing, trembled as He raged and reached out to clutch my soul. I stole lives He had sentenced to die. I held the draft cards high and consecrated them, "Peace!" Outraged, His howls and hatred, His hot spit of blood into my eyes, His curse laid like hot irons branding my soul—these I still feel this moment; always. Inside the draft board I was in the presence of the God I worshipped, the peacemaking God.

I also broke into draft boards because I knew—as I know—that peacemaking makes the human family safer and stronger than does war-making. More importantly, I also wanted to boldly call you forth, challenge you to Resist and choose to become a peacemaker. So if I would not witness to peace, how could I expect you to? If I would not put my life in harm's way, how could I expect soldiers who did so to respect my witness and pause even a nanosecond to listen to "Resist!" and "Peace!"? If I wanted others to turn away from worshipping the God of killing through the ritual of warring, who else would show them how to enact the ritual that makes peace manifest? If not me, how could I ask you to put your life in harm's way?

Was the judge intuitively spiritual and accurate when he proclaimed, "You gentleman strike at the foundation of government..." because we were destroying the Draft System which is the State's equally sacred and secular, profane and holy foundation?

The eighth sacrament!

The prosecutor of course would have nothing to do with my theological musings. He exposed them as a frail shield of my cowardice. In his closing argument to the jury he summed up:

"Now what's Mr. Kroncke's argument? He says, I did as you charge but I committed no crime. I administered a sacrament. Seven sacraments are not enough! To Baptism and Confirmation and the Eucharist and Penance and Holy Orders and Matrimony and Extreme Unction we add the EIGHTH SACRAMENT of the Roman Catholic Church—ripping off draft boards!" (Prosecution Closing, TT)

To wit,

"[The prosecutor] accused Kroncke of trying to "weasel his way out" of his crime with a theological paper." ("Jury convicts two more of Minnesota raiders," Mary Papa, National Catholic Reporter, January 1971)

I am my father's son

At my father's funeral two years before my trial, I spoke of him as being "a good man." I loved my father deeply. I knew the greatness of his mind and heart, and I shared many of his faults and sins. He was obediently patriotic. In 1943 with three children at home, he enlisted in the Navy while I was in my mother's womb. He was German-American and a chemist to boot. Both facts made him suspect during the war against the Nazis. However, he heard the Call to Arms as a call to serve others. In his heart, as for so many of his generation, the war against Hitler was near a holy crusade against evil. Consequently, I was born while he was in the South Pacific. Of greater import is that my father was a devout Roman Catholic. He believed that there was no higher calling than obedience to the truths of the faith. God certainly was Caesar's superior, but Dad taught me that each had just and proper claim on my moral obedience. He strove to be faithful and obedient to these higher powers. In this and so many other ways he was a good man.

My father vigorously rejected my pacifism and opposed my filing for CO status. He held to the Catholic tradition's "Just War theory" that provided moral guidance for going to war. For me, it just enabled every nation to justify every war! He died before I started raiding draft boards, and I've often wondered whether I would have become a raider—an outlaw—if he had lived. Yet, now I must tell you something he never told me while he was alive, that is, how he himself came to resist illegitimate authority.

Father and son: "a clear conscience"

My outlaw life does have a certain pattern as I am the son of Charles Otto Kroncke, Jr. Inscribed on his gravestone is "Thy Will Be Done." He was a man I watched kneel every day in prayer at Holy Mass until I left for the seminary. His counsel, "a clear conscience is a greater thing than physical pleasure." As my trial began, my mother—for the first time ever—shared with me my father's letters to her during World War II. This man I called Dad I still hear speaking. (Note, I was born on 6 August 1944.)

"Francis, I think you should read your father's letters." All are to "Sweetheart." Most dated as "Somewhere in the South Pacific." All signed, "Devotedly yours, Charles."

She is my sweetheart too. After my father's early death at fifty-nine years of age we bonded in the special way a grown son can as a friend to his mother. I watched her loneliness. It drowned her. She was in her early fifties with eight living children, few marketable skills, but an irrepressible spirit. Now she is equally frightened and amused by my Hippie friends. She is totally out of her league when trying to grasp the crazed "radical politics" of the day. Like most women of her generation she followed where her husband led. Now she leads; reaches out to heal me by confirming me as my father's son.

I read several sections to the jury but none was as heart-breaking for me than reading.

"Sweetheart, I am walking in front of rows and rows of white-crosses. And the only reason this is justified is that in twenty to twenty-five years our sons won't have to go to war. "

I brought Somewhere in the South Pacific to jurors who had lived through those times.

17 October 1944

I think you are right about Charles. He will have to be a little gentleman. In fact I want all my sons to be gentlemen. I don't want them to be sissies but I don't want roughnecks either. It seems that some people think that being a roughneck is a mark of a real boy and I may have once myself, but no more. Although I have seen no violence I have seen some of the results of it, and now I know how much value should be put on the finer things of life. I sincerely mean it when I say that my own ambition, my one ambition is to have my children grow up as Christian ladies and gentlemen. People who glory in violence and war, in my humble opinion, are to be pitied because they are very abnormal. Please don't mind my getting philosophical on you, but that is the way my thoughts run. God grant that the day will soon come when I will be with all of you again and can enjoy these finer things.

7 October 1944

Since I too wish I were with you but to sit around regretting things is not going to help Charles or George. What I did, I did with the best intentions a father and husband ever did. I prayed hard before I joined, for guidance. I'm not trying to justify myself, but you know, Sweetheart, I did not leave to shirk my duties. I would willingly die this moment if by that action I could aid you and the children in any manner whatsoever.

11 November 1944

How are you and the children? I hope and pray all of you are well. Today is the 26th Anniversary of the end of the last war. I wonder when this one is going to be finished? I hope soon. War really throws everything out of joint. When one thinks of all the lives and time, material wasted in prosecuting a war, one wonders whether civilization has really progressed as far as some claim. One thing, however, it should teach us to appreciate is peace and do all in our power to prevent any more of this foolishness. I am in one of my reforming moods but when I think of all the time I could be with you and the children, and think of all the others in similar circumstances, I get mad. Of course, I know I volunteered but I feel that that is something I should have done. It is the whole idea of wars that makes me mad. Let us pray that this war will end these silly controversies. I hope that our children will never see another war. If they don't, our sacrifices will not have been in vain. With all my love, I am Devotedly yours, Charles

Mother gives me these letters so that I can testify, "I'm sorry to say that my father was wrong. Wars only lead to wars. The violence has to stop with someone. It stops with me." These letters enable me to share in my father's powerlessness to end war. Mother wants the jurors and judge, everyone to know that I am my father's son, willing to put my life in harm's way for the greater good.

Dad and the "Manhattan Project"

Nevertheless, such letters fail to convey my true patrimony since they barely tell the story of my father's own moral courage and his profound patriotism. After enlisting, since he was a college graduate, Dad was made a Lieutenant, j. g. Since he was a chemist he was assigned to a military laboratory on the base at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. My mother was greatly relieved to have her husband stateside. She was pregnant with her fourth child, me, and her eldest, my sister Martha, had just turned six. Not long after his arrival at Oak Ridge, however, Dad telephoned Mom to tell her that he was being shipped to the South Pacific. What happened?

In brief, Dad learned that he was working on a weapon of mass destruction, namely, the Atom

Bomb. Oak Ridge was part of the Manhattan Project. As dedicated and patriotic a conservative Republican citizen as he was, and as morally responsible as he remained, he could not in conscience as a faithful Roman Catholic work on a weapon that negated every premise of the "Just War" theory. He never discussed this with me, and I only learned about it after his death through his letters. I still wonder how he felt when he had to admit to his superiors—possibly other Roman Catholics—that he had to resist their authority and claim that he must be faithful to a higher authority?

As mentioned, my father passionately debated with me as I formed my early views on nonviolence and filed for my Conscientious Objector status. Pacifism seemed to him to be a worthy ideal, but impractical. He couldn't grasp how I could position myself over against the authority of the State even though I cited the moral condemnation of "Total War" by Vatican Council II. Dad knew how much I was influenced by the visionary spirituality of the Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He would always remind me—scold me!—that Teilhard submitted to papal authority and accepted censure and did not seek to publish his works during his own life time. "How can you, Francis, not submit?"

Why did I argue a "Defense of Necessity"?

"In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience."

And, "For man has in his heart a law written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged."

Also, "It is our clear duty, then, to strain every muscle as we work for the time when all war can be completely outlawed by international consent. This goal undoubtedly requires the establishment of some universal public authority acknowledged as such by all, endowed with effective power to safeguard, on behalf of all, security, regard for justice, and respect for rights." Documents of Vatican II. (My emphases.)

As attorney pro se I led an eight-day trial with thirteen witnesses: Vietnam veterans, theologians, an American historian, an ecologist, a national journalist, several nonviolent activists, even Daniel Ellsberg (whose intent was to release the "Pentagon Papers" as evidence in support of his witness statements). The judge had approved my presenting a "Defense of Necessity." This is a section in the Model Penal Code that permits a defense argument that an alleged crime was committed because the accused was responding to the moral mandate of another law with higher authority. A common example is stealing a car to take a pregnant woman to the hospital, or, more problematic, blowing up a dam, drowning and killing thousands in order to save millions. My claim was for the highest law, God's law and His authority as made known through the Roman Catholic Church and its Documents of Vatican II.

In fact, to underscore the procedural role of invoking a higher authority, a priest witness of mine reminded the judge that in the courtroom a witness is called and required to reference a higher authority to ensure the court that he/she is not lying. Traditionally this requires placing your hand on the Judaeo-Christian bible and saying out loud, "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" Those who do not want to "swear" have an option to affirm, but the intent remains the same, that a higher authority than the State itself is invoked. This priest witness reminded the judge,

"The Court itself sanctions the use of an oath as an authority which will protect the type of testimony that I am about to give. It appeals to a higher authority as a sanction for believing that my testimony will be truthful." (TT)

In this light I admitted that what was clearly a secular crime was mandated by my obligation to not commit a spiritual crime, that is, intentionally taking a life under any circumstances, notably State approved battlefield murder.

Although I began my Opening Statement with, "We did it. And I want to tell you why," and clearly had no expectation that the jury would acquit, I was twice surprised by the judge. First, when we went into his chambers before the closing argument phase I expected him to rule that he would not allow me a closing, so terminating my Defense of Necessity argument. But he did not. He said, "Frank, you can proceed to make your closing argument." This meant that I could sum up and succinctly make my case for the jurors' deliberation. "Succinctly" I presented my closing argument for an hour and a half, going over much of what I have presented here. Then surprise #2: After my closing argument, the judge directs the jury in Instructions to the Jury, Number 15 that they cannot consider any evidence or testimony I submitted—including my just completed closing argument. _Wow!_ Why all of a sudden was he pulling the rug out from under my feet? Why would he not want the jurors to deliberate on all the testimony and evidence presented during the trial? He did not want them to hear anyone or anything, and so sternly yet fatherly he instructed, "I direct you that everything Mr. Kroncke has said here for the last week, all the testimony of his witnesses, everything is irrelevant and immaterial." (TT, my italics)

Voiceless

"Irrelevant and immaterial." What a majestic act: I lose my voice! I lose it because my witness and story is not to be heard. All my life it is my voice that conveys my story. Deep from within me it is my distinct, personal, intimate power of expression. Upon it ride the images and imaginations of my spiritual beliefs, all my hopes and dreams, all facts and truths as I know them and as they live through me. I am baffled because now I have no voice.

This is not hyperbole. I am not speaking allegorically. I intend no metaphor. One moment I turn to you, my juror, and weave my life story into and throughout yours. About the atrocities of the Vietnam War and the crimes of our government, I speak clearly. My voice is passionate. I expose the sufferings of Innocents: skin burning alive with napalm. My voice is truthful: classmates, friends, cousin and kin, my whole generation, lied to and betrayed by elected officials. My voice is hopeful: "Pacem in Terris," Peace on earth declares my spiritual leader, Pope John XXIII, and so I declare "Peace!" My voice is confessional: I am just one guy—reaching out in despair, frustration, anger, almost hopeless, but then not—with gritty hope I act as best I can. When the leaders no longer listen, then words are not enough. The draft raid is my way of speaking, "Peace!"

_Baffled_ : I am left standing before this judge as if I am a man who has been speaking gibberish for a week. Consider: It isn't that I am heard and judged. It isn't that my story is discussed and debated by the jury, fellow humans. No. I am not a human. I am irrelevant and immaterial. Humans speak. I am not to speak. Humans are heard. I am not to be heard. They will come with steel cuffs, lace iron chains through my pants, hobble my ankles. I will shuffle off to the inside darkness of prison.

But something goes wrong—for the judge. After two hours of deliberation, the bailiff summons everyone back into the courtroom. The foreman, a Korean War veteran, rises and asks for clarification, "Can we read the Documents...?" The normally patrician, unruffled judge—palms down, leaning forward, almost teetering off his magisterial chair, indignant—thunderously retorts, _"No! You cannot read the Documents of Vatican Two!"_...Kapow!... Although he instructed the jurors that they were not to consider my arguments, the Documents of Vatican II and Pope John XXIII's "Peace on Earth" stayed in the evidence box— and the jurors were reading them!

Amazingly, we found out later that the jury was initially split six-six. Despite my bold and clear opening statement affirming that I was "guilty as charged," they had listened to my moral and spiritual story as to why. They also read the Council's condemnation of "Total War." I was confused, more than a bit stunned, and still reeling from hearing myself rendered "irrelevant and immaterial." Yet here my jurors: farmers, small town folk, WWII vets, women who had lost husbands and sons to war, as I had urged, were applying the Council's condemnation to America's war in Vietnam. They did not dismiss my response to the call of obedience to a Higher Allegiance. They were struggling as I was with being equally American and Christian. I was truly amazed, momentarily awed—they affirmed the Council's call to laymen like myself to follow their conscience and so engage the world's problems and offer solutions. They heard my father's words. They saw across time: two men struggling to be good men as they sought to be peacemakers in their times. The father: WW II naval officer; the son: Vietnam War draft raider.

My Dark Night of the Soul begins

What no one else in the courtroom senses is that my Dark Night begins at this moment when the judge takes away my voice. He strikes me dumb. Cuts out my tongue. I exit the courtroom and so enter prison: voiceless. Irrelevant and immaterial.

Ah, the irony: I who searched all my life for a way to tell the story of God our Father Almighty and share the vision of the loving Jesus am rendered mute and dumb. For decades I studied history and visions and strove to become one of the best of the best. I was proud to be Catholic. I was proud to be American. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," called for faithfulness to the Catholic vision and the American Dream. When I heard Martin Luther King's "I have a dream!" my commitment to Christian nonviolent action and American justice intensified. I was determined to witness everywhere to this twinned sacred and secular dream of peace on earth.

_Twice condemned!_ Within a week the local archbishop complements the secular judgment as he circulates a letter forbidding pastors from allowing me, "a criminal," to enter their pulpits. To me: "You have no right to preach in a Catholic Church, nor do you have my permission to do such. With cordial best wishes, sincerely yours...." For him secular authority was fulfilling sacred need—the heretic is banished. I lose my Catholic story. I can no longer imagine the world as I was trained to do as a seminarian, young monk and Catholic lay theologian.

I lose my American story. I can no longer imagine the America of my youth. I was raised as Charlie's son to be a conservative, law abiding, patriotic and proud citizen of the greatest country in history. I celebrated Columbus and was inspired by John Wayne. I am now condemned as a violent felon—America's prisoner, an outcast.

I lose: the war goes on

"As to Francis X. Kroncke, I sentence you to a maximum of five years imprisonment. Your time to be served in a federal penitentiary..."

Ah! The moral prize is mine: I did so witness, to all that made me proud to be Catholic and American. "But is it a hollow victory?" I ask myself. Yes, a cruel twist—that I am dumb, no longer with a story to tell you or anyone about how I hold my world together. On the People's behalf, the judge hears the story of Christian nonviolence that holds my world together and judges it worthless. I am crushed; lamed. My artfully woven American-Catholic story lay discounted and discarded, its pages shredded and strewn on the courtroom floor. I admit it. I lose. All draft raiders and draft resisters lose. The war goes on as the trial ends. Irrelevant and immaterial.
Chapter 2: Teilhard made me do it!

A personalizing universe

One man's life and visions was the prime source for the radical reforms of Vatican Council II and equally of my transformation into a pacifist—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., a French Jesuit priest and renown scientist (1881-1955). Twice in my life he became a spiritual wellspring. In my youth for my pacifistic conversion and now today as an elder for my Earthfolk vision (which is Pathway#3).

As I prepared for trial I was ready with a moral and spiritual story that tapped the Roman Catholic tradition and the values of America's secular democracy. Powerful stuff. Maybe. But if Teilhard had been alive, I would have stated, "Your Honor, I now call Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to the witness stand."

For my final three undergraduate years at St. John's University (Minnesota), I was in an Honors Program that studied the "Great Books" curriculum founded by Mortimer Adler at the University of Chicago. My honors thesis was titled "Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's Personalizing Universe." Teilhard was a co-discoverer of "Peking Man," and elected to the French Academy of Science. He served as professor of geology at the Catholic Institute in Paris, director of the National Geologic Survey of China, and director of the National Research Center of France. Of note, as a soldier-priest he was an unarmed stretcher-bearer in World War I. For his battlefield valor he was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in 1921.

Teilhard interpreted Evolution as primarily and ultimately a spiritual phenomenon. He forwarded a vision of a "Divine Milieu" in which the sacred is present through everything and everyone. Simply, Teilhard's spiritual vision radically altered my life's journey. After reading him it was inevitable that I ended up raiding draft boards. Consequently there was no way I could explain myself without talking about Teilhard.

Teilhard rightly earned his reputation as a highly controversial scientific and spiritual figure. He saw matter and spirit as two co-equal aspects of Evolutionary energy. For him the presence of God could be sensed inside an atom as well as throughout the universe. Spiritually, his thought dynamically energized the reforms articulated by Vatican Council II. Its embrace of scientific knowledge, its openness to the world, but most notably its engagement with the world expressed Teilhard's vision and values. Council phrases such as "People of God," "men of goodwill," and "sign of the times" reflect his influence. These were also the three Council themes which most influenced me.

When my father chose to study chemistry at Notre Dame, he faced the same moral dilemma that Teilhard did. During their generations, there was a definite split between science and visions. Scientific knowledge was at its base both atheistic and amoral. However, as with my father, so with Teilhard's pursuit of paleontology there were exceptions made for certain dedicated Catholics. Yet since he advocated embracing Evolution as a way of doing visions Teilhard was censored by the Vatican during his life-time. He was ordered not to seek publication and he obeyed. His writings, nonetheless, were mimeographed and circulated "under the table" among religious and secular intellectuals, worldwide. In 1964 I had to obtain written permission from the local bishop to enter the "Library of Forbidden Books" (Librorum Index Prohibitorum) housed in the Benedictine monastery attached to the university. As a lay scholar I could not read Teilhard without hierarchical approval. A sign of the rapidity of change that marked the Sixties is that within two years Teilhard's books were stocked in the paperback section of St. John's student bookstore.

Teilhard artfully integrated values of the religious, secular and scientific worldviews. But the most daunting challenge was the quite explicit demand that I carve out a personal spirituality based on accepting the insight that my personal presence and moral acts create the world, right now. My existence is God's existence, embodied and manifest through my humanity. More, my personal presence is only fully manifested as I engage the Other—you! In Teilhard's vision, I in my person am all and everything that Evolution is striving to create. Consequently, I, through my personal presence, imagine and so create the world. There is no world other than the personal world, which is created by my engagement with you, the Other—and with God as embodied and manifested through you.

The core tenets of Teilhard's spiritual imagination are: 1) As the brain manifests a mind, so does the Earth manifest a mind-sphere—"Noosphere." As the heart manifests a spirit, so does the Earth manifest a spirit-sphere—"Christosphere." As the body manifests personal presence, so does the Earth manifest a hyper-personal presence, Life itself. In concert all express the Divine Milieu. 2) It is absolutely true that every human being and every human action counts. This means that every person and personal act—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—nurtures the Divine Milieu.

Teilhard celebrated God as present "in and through everything." This is termed panentheism. Evolution is God's way of revealing the fullness of humanity. The Earth is alive. We—you, me, every person—are the consciousness and conscience of the living Earth.

Life as a relationship

How I make myself present depends upon how I engage other people. Translated into my terms, if I kill someone then the collective human brain (Noosphere) thinks murderous thoughts. If I murder someone, the human heart is cold and evil (Christosphere). If I slay someone, I block the realization of the presence of the Divine Milieu. There is nothing that I do that does not have a direct impact on the character and quality of Evolutionary life on Earth. Everything I do counts.

Teilhard integrated the Evolution chapter of modern science into the fundamental Christian story. He held great regard and respect for both the secular world of scientific knowledge and the truths of spiritual revelation. He did not deny either, nor have one absorb or replace the other. For him secular space had a spiritual aspect; spiritual space had a secular aspect. These notions were the source to his and my understanding of sacraments, that is, that sacraments reveal the spiritual aspect of profane and secular moments and spaces. He sparkled with fire and passion as he wrote a "Hymn of the Universe" and celebrated a "Mass on the World."

I believed Teilhard with my whole heart. I was ready to weave his vision into my trial defense. Every day I strove to live, consciously, in this Divine Milieu. It was why I was so ripe for Gordy's message. For in the Divine Milieu every person counts, there are no gooks. Everyone enacts a ritual of peacemaking as they embrace "that of God" in you, me and the stranger—even the enemy. For my testimony I coined the Teilhardian-like phrase "socio-political sacramental acts," so linking the secular and the spiritual which are two-faces of the same coin.

Specifically, it was Teilhard's insight that every personal act counts that would prove to be the difference maker for me. Teilhard's "personalizing universe" intellectually converted me from being a Conscientious Objector to a "Catholic Radical" draft board raider. He made me understand the worldwide impact of my personal moral action. He also made me understand that physical objects and the material world could manifest the presence of God, if I made them manifestations of my mind and heart. Objects such as 1-A cards would remain only inert paper items unless I used them to make manifest their spiritual presence, that is, as enlivened manifestations of the killing God.

What distinguished Teilhard from his intellectual and scientific predecessors was that he interpreted Evolution as a dynamic phenomenon that had two relational polar points. One was the physical starting point, Evolution's Alpha Point. This was the pushing-forward energy of physical Evolution. The other was the spiritual end point, Love's Omega Point. This was the pulling-towards energy of the Heart of God. Both points anchored the Divine Milieu and their interaction was the dynamic that pushed-pulled Evolution forward to create human life.

The truly radical and revolutionizing import of this dynamic relationship between the Alpha and Omega points was that, together, they effect a "hominization" of the Earth (and of the universe). Consider: To become fully human you need to be born of the flesh (pushed out of your mother's body onto the planet!) and then have your personality—what makes you specially you—drawn-forth by those around who love you. This "becoming fully human" dynamic is the heartbeat of the universe (of Evolutionary Love). In this light, you are Earth's body, and your loving heart makes the Earth fully human—transforms it into the "Living Earth."

If Teilhard was right, every human being manifested my person. I was in relationship with every single person even though I didn't directly know him or her. Simply put, each of us is always present to the other. Moreover, it was impossible for me as a person not to be in relationship with every other person on the earth. Humans are, in this light, one person, as we are all one biological unit or gene pool, and one spirit.

We create and live within a Divine Milieu where God's Evolutionary Loving is present through everything and everyone. Possibly it is clearer now why Teilhard's vision radically changed my life, and why after reading him it was inevitable that I'd end up raiding draft boards.

Teilhard's world-wide-web of the human heart

Teilhard's work anticipated, found complementarity with, and blossomed in the understanding and insights of the work of Quantum theorists and today's Gaia visionaries. Teilhard's most revolutionary statement was that every action we take, everything we do and say, has an impact on the future. This was an early insight into the human "Butterfly Effect." That is, what one person or a group does, whether positive or negative, impacts every other person. From that perspective he wrote, "Some reflections on the spiritual repercussions of the Atom Bomb."

In Teilhard's vision while my actions may initially be small and judged insignificant, they have a way of being amplified over time. To me, this meant that every person was someone with whom I could be in relationship and consequently was vital to my discovery of who I am. Additionally, every personal act of mine and yours has some degree of impact on every other relationship in the cosmos. In essence, I couldn't become me or reach my full human potential unless I nurtured my relationship with every other human. I had to find a way of inviting others to receive me and for me to receive them. But wasn't that physically impossible? Of course. But maybe not emotionally impossible.

In another way, Teilhard anticipated the emergence of the world-wide-web. He moved me to understand that I am a heart on a world-wide-web of the human heart. His Divine Milieu made me feel, as I walked through my physical day at my college in central Minnesota, that I was simultaneously in communion with everyone in the global web of the Living Earth. Every thought I think is part of the Noosphere. Every thought you think influences me. Obviously, this is not a direct A to B connection. But how could it be otherwise? Do you really believe that what you think is not important? Not powerful? That you are merely an isolated someone about whom others don't care? Possibly only God cares? Not in Teilhard's word. Not in mine. In the Divine Milieu you are as important and powerful as everyone else.

Teilhard's vision led me to make deep contact with an impassioned emotion that I had always been connected with but about which I had no concepts or imagination. Reading him I heard "Awake!" and it dawned upon me that I was the Living Earth. Just as I was called by my faith to be a "People of God," so was I commanded, as all others are, as you are, to profoundly grasp and passionately embrace myself as Earth's heartbeat and conscience. I came to imagine the everlasting Earth as forever hearth and home. That the Earth is us. That we humans are lively manifestations, presences of Earth. We are its consciousness, its imagining. We are Earth's passion. Earth is hearth and we its flaming breath of fire. We humans are full-flesh in blood and gasp, birthed from the Living Earth: seed, flower, bloom and fade. Whoa!

War as a suicidal act of killing yourself.

If you accepted Teilhard's worldwide web of the human heart as I did, how would you respond to a call to war? If you understood that every action you took—every thinking, feeling, kinesthetic, creative action—affected every other human, then what would you feel when you slew another? Isn't his or her bloodshed your own blood? Isn't war an act of killing yourself? Simply suicide? If you felt this way as I did, how else could you respond but to conscientiously object—resist illegitimate authority through acts of nonviolent civil disobedience?

To hammer this point home, imagine thinking about killing people all day long. It's easy to do, just turn on the TV and follow one show after another, from movies to the news to Hollywood gossip, and you cannot but be moved to think violent thoughts and steep yourself in violent images. More significantly, doesn't it make you feel that such violence is justified? That national defense requires that the enemy be slain? That violence is "just the way it is" in urban areas? That sexual violence and rape is the price sexy women pay in the world of glitz and glamour and free sex?

I know that I can think, feel and accept all these violences if I emotionally distance myself from what I am actually seeing and hearing. But if I let myself deeply feel what I am seeing and hearing in terms of our relationship, that is, that it is you who is being harmed, then since you are integral to my being me I can no longer tolerate all of this violence. If I see the enemy as my personal family and seek to intimately embrace them as my brothers and sisters, then I experience war as a direct, personal attack on all I hold sweet and dear. It matters little which nation's soldiers are on the attack. Once I behold and revere everyone as a darling brother or sister within the People of God, I can no longer imagine killing them, unless I am suicidal. If every Other human is genetically and spiritually my sibling, a child in the one human family, then they are me: to slay them is to slay myself.

I accept that this might be quite a leap for you and many others—to go from Teilhard's vision to enacting a ritual of peacemaking in a draft board. But that was where Teilhard took me. As I joked, "Teilhard made me do it!"

"To live as if I am no one's enemy"

I was intellectually living within Teilhard's Divine Milieu when Gordy brought me out of the clouds, down into my heart, evoking a passionate commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience. He made me feel in a radical and disturbingly new way—he made my heart beat cosmically. He had acted on the battlefield not from some moment of intellectual clarity but from an overwhelming primal emotional impulse. In my words, Gordy did not want to feel as if he was anyone's enemy. He not only did not want to name anyone as his enemy, he wanted to live as if he was no one's enemy. To live affirming that everyone was one of the People of God.

Feeling in this unusual manner—heart beating cosmically—I faced the harsh truth that after attending Holy Mass I could still live as if I am someone's enemy. Although a sacred ritual, Mass did not transport me to the spiritual state of living as if I am no one's enemy. I had to confront the almost unthinkable possibility that my spiritual language and sacred rituals were more a part of the problem than the solution. It soon became quite clear that I only had to look at the Catholic hierarchy and observe how they passively responded to the war for a validation of this unhappy insight. Other than Pope John XXIII himself, nearly all of the Church's hierarchy of Cardinals and Bishops did not walk the walk that the Holy Spirit revealed to them during Vatican Council II.

Personally, I was beyond being highly distressed. I was in continual anguish and torment. I yearned to feel the comfort, forgiveness and holiness of the sacraments that I had experienced all my life. I wanted to feel their promise once again—"peace beyond understanding." But I didn't; couldn't. I was genuinely troubled by the fact that I could not recall one Catholic chaplain ever telling me that after he offered Mass on the battlefield a soldier came to him and said that he had to throw down his arms. You can understand then that when Gordy told me that he did throw down his arms, I was blown away by not only his courage but the spiritual message he carried. I understood that if Gordy had only been suffering battlefield fatigue, he would have gone AWOL, then hopefully sought some psychiatric care. But he didn't; couldn't. Rather, deeply wounded in body and soul, he brought back a message, a revelation of staggering simplicity —"There is no need for war anymore." Hear him again: All humans are family, everyone a gook, and every person One People of God. The Living Earth is home to all. Not a part or sector of it is a hootch. In this light, all warfare is friendly-fire.

Gordy spoke through me to the jurors. I testified, "If we are to have peace on earth, we must all live as if we are no one's enemy."
Chapter 3: "Slave of the State"

Fact: I took on the United States of America and was beaten down. The trial: January 11 through 18, 1971. My appellate citation: "United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Francis X. Kroncke and Michael D. Therriault, Defendants-Appellants, United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit 459 F.2d 697 (1972)." The appellate court affirmed my criminality and relegated me to being "a slave of penal servitude to the State...for the time being, the slave of the State." (Ruffin v. Commonwealth (62 VA 790, 1870) It fêted me as outlaw and punched my final ticket for passage into the caged world of penitentiary justice. Mentally and spiritually, I was pummeled into submission and irrelevancy. My judicial master held me to be less than a man. He felt no qualms about not respecting me. He had heard my words but to him they were just garble, impotent sounds: irrelevant and immaterial. He did not listen to my voice. I was, in his eyes, a barbarian; one outside the law. I struck at the foundation of his government and so magisterially anointed he cast me out.

As so often happened, a stranger revealed still other truths.

" **Conflicting standards**. The actions of the "Minnesota 8" illustrate again the agonies which confront our nation and particularly our young. While deploring their methods I thank God for their courage. Authority will never be respected and obeyed until it is accompanied by equal responsibility and justice.

We attempt to instill in our children a moral if not religious conscience. We teach them to do what is right regardless of what others may do. That is, until the question of military service arises when we say, "Forget about your conscience! Be quiet and do what you're told."

The single most overwhelming problem facing our country today is the growing skepticism, cynicism and mistrust of authority which says one thing and does another—which holds one standard for itself and another for others." (Mrs. Elizabeth P. Franzen, Minneapolis, Letter to Editor, Minneapolis Tribune, January 6, 1971).

"Authority will never be respected and obeyed until it is accompanied by equal responsibility and justice." The lady hit the nail on the head! She knew that it was the judges, not me, who were "striking at the foundation of government."

Sentencing

At sentencing, I asked the Judge:

"What do you think putting me in jail is going to do? Am I going to be rehabilitated? How am I going to serve my community by being in jail? Now I am willing to undergo the experience, obviously, or I wouldn't be here today. But I would like to know from the depths of your person: you give out sentences to people, like five years of a person's life or one year of a person's life. Do you understand what happens to people? What is going to happen when I am in prison?

You are a man who sends people to prison. I am a man who, I guess, tries to make people think. That was my job. Or I send them to God, whatever you want. I sort of have a vague idea from talking to people what prison is like. But have you experienced jail? Will you come to see me in jail? Will we share that in any way, or will I be out of your life for good? I know that what I have said is probably not as eloquent as what others might, but I guess this is not the time for eloquence, but really for honest truth.

I don't understand—and I would like you to explain to me—I don't understand what putting us in jail is going to do. I would like to understand your position. I would like to understand how you think. I would like to understand the System that you claim allegiance to. I want to understand this country. I want to understand its people or I wouldn't have acted, and I think you owe it to me in honesty and to the people here as you sentence us to tell us." (TT)

Jailhouse dreams

Once back in jail awaiting transfer to federal prison, the voices of judicial judgment haunted my sleep.

"Those who act out of an allegiance to a Higher Law than the Law of the Land are making Jungle Law." (TT)

"Lastly, I want to talk with you about...the Vietnam War and the Selective Service System. In that connection I advise you that you have a very limited responsibility in this case. It is solely to make a determination under these standards of Law which I have stated to you as to whether these defendants are guilty or not guilty. And that is all. You have no philosophical, or religious, or theological responsibility at all! Well, I advise you that you have no such responsibility. If the Vietnam war is wrong. If the Selective Service is unfair, and if other things are wrong in this country, the remedy lies in the Halls of Congress or in the Executive Branch of the Government. In our tripartite system of government it is the responsibility of Congress to enact the laws, even bad laws if they have a mind to and some of them may be very bad or very good. It is the responsibility of the Executive Department to enforce those laws and our responsibility, the Judicial Branch of the Government, to interpret them and to apply them to particular fact situations, as we are doing here today." (TT)

I twist and turn, groan into barred darkness:

"Religious doctrine or belief of a person cannot be recognized or accepted as an excuse or justification for his committing an act which is a criminal offense against the law of the land...Further, it is the law that no one has the right to determine on a personal basis which laws will be obeyed and which will not, because of alleged evils." (TT)

Waking restlessness, echoing sighs of resignation:

"Well, Mr. Kroncke I guess that I don't have to defend myself but I took an oath to enforce the law when I was made a judge."

"And I was baptized before God to live a free life!"

"I can't... maybe it would have been better to have ruled right away and had none of the evidence."

"It might have been."

"But I didn't think that was fair to you and I didn't think that was right, and if the purpose in your mind is to focus attention on the evils, we have been here eight days doing it, or six days, and maybe there is some advantage to that, but the law as I see it is what I read, and I'm sorry but that's the way...." (TT)

Me,

"This is a difficult for me to say because, in a sense, I realize that I am naming you, in my understanding, as an immoral and evil person to people. But somewhere the problems of society go on, and somewhere people have responsibility, and you are the type of man who has had many people come before you with problems, especially with reference to the War, and you have, seemingly consistently— as have all the judges in this District Court—handled them in the same way, saying: 'Well, the responsibility lies somewhere up there'...with some unknown God called the State." (TT)

Finally, a battle-screed resounds down through millennia justifying war:

"I don't need to argue whether this is an act of violence or not, but it is an act of destruction of property. If everyone in this country who didn't like the law took it unto himself to say, 'I don't like the law', automobiles are killing too many people in this country, and therefore I am going to break-in and destroy the plans for next year's automobile—and they kill more people than the Vietnam war has killed every year, pretty near—if you take the law into your own hands because you don't like the result that you see, then we have no government and no laws at all. We just then have anarchy and the Court cannot countenance the proposition, despite the sincerity and the eloquence of your arguments, that because you are motivated by religious principles or otherwise to do what you consider to be a moral duty, that you therefore have the right to say, 'The law doesn't count. I believe it is wrong and therefore I am going to do my best to impede it.' That is just so contrary to our System, that it has consequences far reaching." (TT)

So a final judgment is rendered:

"To condone their conduct or to dismiss it with a slap on the wrist would be to invite continued lawlessness and to approve violence as an agent for change. Change may well be needed in America but charge without order results only in chaos. Those who act out of allegiance to a higher law than the law of the land are making jungle law.

Freedom cannot exist in a society which permits violence. These misguided men are wrongly manifesting their opposition to the present state of affairs through recourse not to the law but to rebellion against the law and that is wrong, that is a crime sanctionable, as are all crimes, by conviction and punishment." (TT)

My mother

What lay ahead? How was my family taking all this?

"Mrs. Charles Kroncke, mother of Francis Kroncke, spoke for most of the parents when she gave her view of her son's impending imprisonment. 'I am sorry to see him go to prison, but I am very proud to see my young man stand up for his convictions and take the aftermath,' the Hastings woman said. It will be a great loss to us all, but somehow I don't feel their actions will have been in vain. Their views will affect society and my son will emerge from prison as fine a person as he is today. I am very proud of him." ("Winners prepare for jail with party," Peter Vaughan, Minneapolis Star, November 1971)

Oh, it is so painful to read "my son will emerge from prison as fine a person as he is today." How little we all knew! How white, middle-class, and naively trusting were we in the Church and democratic State. But I had no way of responding to her then. Not her, not even myself. I had no voice. I honestly had no way any longer to speak about either the past which was a record of my failure or the future which was a journey into a darkness I was not in any way prepared to enter.

All that I did have, curiously, was a sliver of comfort in prayer, in the only prayer that yet resonates with me today:

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
Chapter 4: Peacemaking Visions

What did I learn from attempting to be a peacemaker and failing at every turn? As I entered prison the "irrelevant and immaterial" mantra rang so loud and continually inside my head that I could not think a clear thought for near a decade. A Dark Night of the Soul is a traditional spiritual reference to a _via negativa_ journey through the dark inner recesses of one's mind and soul—the Shadow realm. For some this means a wrestling with devils and demons—however the disturbing dark forces that lie in ambush inside one's psyche are named—and also a gut-wrenching experience of the absence of God in one's life and world. Prison and the decade after became my Dark Night.

Although I was not self-aware about this as I entered prison, my inner sense of depthless emptiness arose because I had just had all my connections to the patriarchal Father God faith ripped and shredded from my mind and soul. Without my knowing it, an unintentional consequence of my trial was that, like Adam and Eve, I was exiled, cast out of paradise (America and the Church), shamed and cursed as a secular and theological Outlaw!

Ten years later, 1983, I began writing two essays that would mark the beginning of my movement out of my Dark Night towards the sunlight—a very dim sunlight! The first one was "Vietnam Undeclared." I wrote it to my two sons to help them better understand my Vietnam War years and the world they had inherited from my generation. Fittingly, it presented all that I knew to say about my past right up to and at the moment when I entered prison. "Vietnam Undeclared" was my final articulation of my failed peacemaking visions and contained the first awakenings of core themes of my Outlaw Visions.

In this essay I strove to clearly articulate to my sons how I understood the role of war-making both theologically and, as I came to grasp, mythically. _Note well_ : I discerned and described the role of war as mythic story and social ritual. This was a critical and pivotal insight, that is, that America is an institutionally organized society where institutions express dominion and which individuals can only do so through their institutional identities. Institutional rights override individual rights, and, quite clearly, are the source for individual rights, not vice versa.

_Consider_ : When near five years old we take our children out of the family environment and place them in a bedrock institution so that they can learn how to live institutionally. They stay there for anywhere from twelve to twenty years before graduating to their next institutional identity. Normally, they do not return to live in their pre-institutional family home. In fact, their institutional education focused on enabling them to move easily into their next institutional identity. Our corporate and market based economy requires that a young child adapt to the institutional world. He/she must learn how to embody institutional ways. This requires following specific liturgical social rituals, of which registering for the Draft is a legally mandated one.

Our educational institution graduates every male into the military institutional realm. Every male successfully graduates into the military through registration, for most this occurs at the close of their high school years. All other institutional options, such as higher education or a corporate job, are not assured but must be competed for. There is no competition required to enter the military job pool—all applicants are guaranteed acceptance. So it is logical to conclude that the objective of the primary educational system (elementary through high school) is to prepare males directly and females indirectly for adopting their military institutional identity. In point of fact every American male reading this who at eighteen registered with the Selective Service System has a military identification number—that remains uniquely his. All of this came home to me in spades as I stood before the judge and received the maximum prison sentence, "Five years to be served in a federal penitentiary." The maximum sentence for a first time offender and committed non-violent activist...just one criminal act but it rocked the foundations of...of what? Hmmm, Francis, you really pissed them off. No, threatened them. What did you actually do, Daddy?

At first I was uncomfortable with this notion of social ritual and liturgy. All I knew were the ceremonies of the religious institutional way. For me ritual and liturgy had more to do with God and saving my soul than providing insights into secular institutional society. Yet since I had felt the absolute wrath of society for my transgression of institutional ritual—Resisting the draft and destroying its liturgical elements, that is, the draft files—I had to re-think "What does their reaction tell you about what you actually did by raiding draft offices?" I had to accept that society functioned in a way I had not been educated to understand. In brief, my trial transcripts should be read as a child's primer on why war is an institutionalized social ritual in American society.

In contrast to our institutional ways, in most non-Western and/or non-industrial societies a child grows up learning near everything while living in a family or kin structure. Even when a child assumes a group identity, such as being part of a clan or tribe, it is a kinship based system and one's family identity remains as the individual's bedrock identity and learning environment. As I reflected on why the Selective Service System was the only institution every young male at eighteen must identify with through registration under penalty of imprisonment, I realized that the social group that was served and the cultural identity formed by registering with the SSS was quite obviously the bedrock institution of American society, here, the military institution. From this perspective I re-examined the SSS and soon spied its character and social function as a ritual with describable liturgies. This is what I wanted my sons to understand about the world I was bequeathing to them as father.

Being a media drenched society, the liturgy of war-making is regularly and continually telecommunicated. It is noteworthy that old movies showed the Call to War as "Uncle Sam wants you!" These words tapped into a sense of obligation. For my son's generations current calls are less to war than to consider war-making as an act of personal self-realization and signs of one's maturity. "Be all you can be!" "Army of One!" and "Army Strong!" The locker-room macho banter about war making a man out of you or the oft heard judicial sentence to Boot Camp as an alternative to incarceration: You'll go in a boy and come out a man! underscore the warrior sense of masculinity, namely, that it is formed through acts of "manly" violence and the shedding of blood.

As I wrote I also answered many of my own long-standing but unresolved questions. For the longest time I could not get a handle on why the State came down so hard on us—hearing "five years" terrified me. I of course knew that the draft system was the supply line of battle-field-hands for the war, and I had an intuition about the secular sacramental character as I spoke of the raids as "socio-political sacramental acts." Nevertheless, it took a lot of reflection on things that my Dad had told me about how he entered and exited WWII for me to be convinced that indeed war for America was a ritual act, and that registering, going to Boot Camp, and preparing for battle were actually a series of liturgical acts. Once I discerned that Endless War was a mythic story, truly a story of origin for secular America, my analysis and interpretations fell into place.

Yet I don't want to gloss over the not so veiled emotional tone in this essay. At its conclusion I had no answers, no quick fixes, no bright paths for my sons to follow. I doubt if you'll miss sensing my not so thinly muffled resignation that the visions of war-marking would remain effectively unchallenged and hegemonic ad infinitum. At that moment in time, I no longer believed that any extant visions or path to enlightenment, whether Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, et al., either desired to or could challenge and defeat the visions of war-making. The world my sons were inheriting from my generation was imprisoned deep within the most forlorn and dark recesses of a Dark Night's realm where Endless Warring thrived (as Cold Wars and hot wars). As their father I had failed to find even a slither of Earth where they could dwell peacefully and comfortably at home.

" **Vietnam Undeclared"**

You ask me about Vietnam, my sons, and words die upon my lips. For Vietnam is more than I or my generation can define, describe or express. As a word it is a dictionary entry, a noun denoting a geographical spot but beware this simple deception for Vietnam is more than seven letters. It is seven letters with seven times seventy times seventy meanings. While millions have uttered it, few have heard it with identical understanding. For Vietnam is one of those rare words, one of an awesome few in human history, which truly conjures spiritual insight. When it is spoken, the deepest emotions of the human soul are unleashed. When it is voiced, a People dreams. Upon its sound America once again trembles, holds tight its pounding heart, and kneels in prayer. Yes, Vietnam harbors this majestic power. It brings individuals and us the American People to our knees. But to what or whom does Vietnam drive us to worship, to pray? This is why words die upon my lips. For Vietnam has delivered me and the American people into a time and place which is sacred but of a sacredness outside of our tradition, our history, our religious understanding.

Vietnam is word of incantation and exorcism. As such it draws forth all that is darkly evil and foreboding within the individual and American soul while simultaneously calling forth all that is brightly good and healing. My sons, Vietnam is scrawled in blood across the corpse of my generation, yet it is also our anointing for new birth. Vietnam is the last word of our death and the first word of our new tongue. Be patient with what I will say to you. Ponder it, reflect upon it, let it take you to the new sacred ground. Let Vietnam become your tradition, for it is my patrimony. Speak it to heal generations to come.

Vietnam was not a war

To grasp Vietnam, you must first understand war. This is requisite because Vietnam was not a war. Yes, it was killing and murder, rape and pillage, atrocity—all that which takes place in a war. Likewise, it was heroic deeds, honorable actions and noble, selfless sacrifice—all that which takes place in a war. But it was not a People's war, and it was not an American war. It was neither because it was undeclared.

What is the significance of being undeclared? After all it can be argued, Vietnam was as described above. Indeed men dressed in uniforms, appropriations were allocated, military alliances were strengthened, and the Evening News brimmed with footage of carnage, pain and triumph.

Being undeclared, Vietnam was not liturgically ritualized—and war is a liturgy. A liturgy is that which makes whole, which grounds an event of spiritual proportion to mundane time and space. Without declaration, nothing can begin or end. Vietnam Undeclared is then without beginning and without end; it is a reality untethered to time and space. As such, the act of non-declaration must be judged either trivial or as an unusual act whose profundity has never been tapped.

My sons, the word Vietnam is volcanic. Observe those who speak it. It is never received by ear or loosed from the tongue in weak conversation. It is a word which beckons, entices, erupts; even its triviality addresses the profound.

War is the naming of an enemy

War is a public proclamation of the existence of an enemy. The enemy is proclaimed and named. War is the way in which a People defines itself as unified as it separates from this enemy. The public proclamation is a ritual which initiates the liturgy that unites a People on every level: individual, social, political, historical, psychological and mythic. This ritual public proclamation is the clear and distinct beginning of collective memory. Through this public proclamation the People are made whole, become one People, one nation—live their common name, "Americans!"

Under this common name, not their individual identities, war is waged. "America is at war!" shouts the proud citizen; it is not he at war but himself as People. He is not personally responsible for battlefield slaughter rather it is the People who slay the enemy through him. In this way the public proclamation bares the soul of each individual as it evokes and reveals the collective soul of the nation, of the People. War then is primarily a transforming and transcending act. As it transforms individuals into the People, it transcends the moral limitations imposed upon individuals by the collective. It effects this through a specific liturgy of which ritual public declaration is the necessary first step in the naming of the People and its Enemy.

Prior to the proclamation the People were united, after it they are unified. Before they were private citizens, after they are warriors. Before their leader was presidential, after he is Commander-in-Chief. War describes that time when each individual person is intensely aware of and lives his collective identity. While some become soldiers, all become warriors; don the mythic armor. "America at war" means each citizen at war. During war each is a patriot regardless of the humbleness of task, whether knitting socks for soldiers at the front or dive-bombing from out the clouds. Each individual person is unified in a common pursuit—the slaughter of the Enemy.

The ritual and liturgy of war

Citizens enter Boot Camp where they become soldiers—the physical and visual symbols of the transformation into warrior. The soldier's visible alteration: cut of hair, mode of dress, attitude of walk and salute, are ritual marks of distinction. While all citizens are warriors, only soldiers are trained to kill. Although covert and spy actions are part of warring, it is the visible battles of the soldiers which are cheered and wept over. How the soldier fares, overcomes obstacles, manifests bravery... dies...is how the People emote. It is to them that Purple Hearts are awarded, to their families distinguished Crosses bestowed. The soldier is the emotional embodiment of the identity created by the public declaration of the war. The soldier is the individual transcending his own morality as he becomes People at war. The soldier is the heart and soul of the People.

The soldier comes into existence through ritual and gains meaning through the liturgy of war. He lives in myth, a creation of the collective soul of the People. He has real existence and spiritual meaning only when war is declared; he has no individual character—he is as he acts out, creates war, as he kills: this is his liturgical rite.

When the war is over the liturgy concludes in a set way. As with the Beginning so the End is ritually declared in headlines: "Victory in Europe!" "Peace Declared!" Once declared, the soldier demobs. He re-transforms through disrobing. It is a public ritual embraced within celebration. As the soldier returns home symbols of new life bedeck him—flowers are strung around his neck, women (regardless of stature as mother, wife, sister, child) hang upon him, hugging and kissing, a festive atmosphere blooms under swirls of confetti and booming sounds of drum and brass bands; people dance in the streets.

After the parade, his discharge, his re-transformation is complete. Thereafter he is forbidden to wear his uniform except on special occasions. He adopts current dress and style. At the same time, he is re-bound by personal morality. No longer can he act on behalf of the People. His is once again an individual, not a collective soul. He ceases to have liturgical meaning. He no longer has meaning in the mythic realm.

Without ritual the soldier cannot be created. Without ritual citizens cannot become warriors. Without ritual neither the individual nor the collective can speak or hear "War!" There is no warrior discourse or embrace either private or public; no liturgical moment.

War is a transcending moral act

War is bloodshed. Blood is a term used to define a People, "We share the same blood." It is a blood defined by a boundary of time and space, by a history and a nation. Blood is German or Irish or Armenian or Kenyan or Vietnamese or American. Blood flows through the veins of the individual and courses through the heart of the People.

To shed blood is a mythic act, for it is the slaughter of another alien People, not just of an individual. Cain was accursed and marked not just because he slew Abel but because in so slaying his brother he was shedding his own and his People's blood. His sacrilege was that he did not transform his brother into enemy, rather he slew his own People—and such is murder, not war. For this he was marked and condemned. There is no morality which makes brother slaying acceptable. Only when brother is named as enemy can his slaying be justified through war's ritual and liturgy.

To shed a brother's blood requires naming him as enemy. It is a naming grounded in a spiritual, transforming power, in the power of the People in service to their God, for it changes all individual enemies into a Public Enemy. It is a naming drawn against an offense of mythic proportion, against an act judged evil.

Once named as enemy, the brother's blood is not considered familial. Quite the contrary, its shedding is ritually required for the People to continue to liturgically define themselves as a distinct People. Unless the enemy's blood is shed and victory won, the People stand at risk of losing their identity, history, and spiritual ground. As such they would be rendered morally illegitimate; not regarded as warriors and soldiers but as murderers like Cain.

War's loser must surrender. It is surrender a step beyond submission. It is a spiritual renunciation replete with acts of contrition and implorations for forgiveness, but more significantly it is a renunciation—a sundering of a People's mythic power. Surrender encompasses the denial by the enemy that his mythic power was real. Righteously, the loser is accused of war crimes, adjudged to have acted outside of myth and ritual, and cast outside the spiritual realm and named as criminal, as moral outlaw. Indicted like Cain his blood-shedding is not redemptive rather it is denounced as a common crime: murder. Denied the power of his ritual, the loser is deprived of identity, control over his own myth and history, and allegiance to his God who is now proclaimed a false god.

The loser is forbidden to ritualize the war. Liturgically, he cannot ceremoniously end it. There are no parades. His soldiers' uniforms are badges of disgrace. He cannot frame time within the war's historical boundaries. Collectively and individually the loser is denied mythic existence as a People and is forced to bear the full weight of his bloodshed which is now interpreted solely as a lawless and morally illegitimate act. In sum, the loser is rendered into parts, never to be whole, never to be People again. War's loser ceases to exist on the collective, mythic level. Like Cain, the loser wanders, cast forth from the realm of the holy and whole.

War then is a set of rituals and a liturgy which morally and spiritually wholes and heals a People through the naming and slaughter of an enemy People. As such it is an act which transcends individual will and action while enabling the individual to transcend his own will and morality.

War is the individual as an agent of God

When war is declared—FDR and World War II: "This day shall live in infamy!"—men step forward and submit themselves to spiritual reformation. It is spiritual because they now will do what is morally forbidden in normal times. They murder. They enter the sacred zone. They touch the creative power which is, in profane times, reserved only for God. As warrior they render death. They do so by offering themselves as sacrifice. They ready themselves for murdering by a ritual preparation for redemptive dying—an act of self transcendence.

Once declared, a People hears that its sons and fathers are going to be transformed. They will no longer be citizens: farmers, teachers, professional athletes, welders, rather they are to become warriors. War is a realm of self-transcending dying—an individual death is given collective meaning. The dying soldier is America dying, yet he is America being born as his death is sacrifice offered in hope of his People's rebirth. From the war America is created anew. When it comes to tell its mythic story of origin—its official People's history—America marks its textbook chapters by these phases of self-transcending dying and new birth. History is given meaning as it references the boundaries of war: Revolutionary War, post-Civil War, pre-World War I, post-World War II, and so on. As such each generation learns that the story of the American People is set in mythic and spiritual terms. Each chapter is marked by sacrificial blood. The overall story is that of the People being mythically reborn again as Warrior Nation.

Each generation is taught to seek these rituals and to conduct this liturgy—to create its own time of moral transcendence. Each seeks to test its mettle, reveal its spiritual character and strength through the liturgy of war. For only in this realm of moral transcendence can a People live its collective name, become Americans. A generation which does not fight a war is a lost generation, one whose worth is untested and unproven.

The spirituality of war

War is grounded in a People's collective spiritual vision. It reveals a People's fundamental spiritual beliefs. Among the People war is publically spoken about as being a holy crusade. As such it is a primary expression of the relationship of that People with their God. The war's declaration is an altar call for witnesses who are faithful to the moral vision, who desire to become standard bearers of God's truth. Winning a war is interpreted as a validation of a People's holiness. Losing a war blankets a People with guilt, a sense of uncleanness (immorality), and of abandonment by their God. A People who has lost a war interprets such as a blight in ritualistic terms: as a call to purification—a return to basic fundamentals beliefs. After losing a war, a People calls itself to revitalization rituals, rituals of new birth or new baptism, rituals of re-confirmation, re-identification encompassing confession, cleansing, exorcism, and anointing. After victory, like rituals are enacted although they are rituals to release fullness and blessing. They are rituals of celebration, joy, and triumph—the exaltation of God. Yet after victory or defeat the common goal of all rituals is to return to normalcy, to the everyday, to life lived without intense collective emotion—to the mundane and profane.

When war ends it is urgent and critical that the soldier not linger in the mythic zone where he will be tempted to become a murderer. The ritual of exiting, of cleansing, of purification must begin. He must be re-formed as father or son, as plumber, executive, dancer, or mailman. He must hear the war undeclared. Not for this to happen is to jeopardize his sanity because it was men, women and children that he killed, and if not re-formed he will continue to kill and become a terror at home. Without an exit ritual, the individual will not be at peace; he will be caught in a timeless and spaceless zone where he is neither citizen nor warrior. He will be accursed and marked like Cain: condemned, a wanderer never at rest, never at home, without myth or history. He will merely exist, not live, outside of time and space—in exile. For him, the war will never have begun nor ever ended.

The rituals and liturgy of war are integrated and adorned with the rituals and liturgy of a People's dominant religion, here American Christianity. Although Christianity preaches "Thou shalt not kill!" the soldier accepts his primary role as killer with moral approbation. Although the soldier slays his human brother, he is not marked like Cain. Rather, the soldier is like God's Son, Jesus, who gave his life in selfless sacrifice that others may be saved. The soldier's slaying is understood and valued in terms of this risk, this sacrifice he is offering. His slaying is the slaying of himself more than of his enemy. Thus, what is in normal times murder becomes a healing, whole rendering act. In sum, war as ritual slaying is how the individual transcends ethical and moral limits and enters into the sacred realm, emerges as a spiritual partner with God.

War as liturgy then must emerge into peacemaking to complete its cycle. Peacemaking in Christian terms is a Resurrection peace, that of being born again. Peacemaking is the public proclamation that the war is ended. It is the transition to normal times; back out of the mythic realm to the moments of individual story. The leader once again becomes President and relegates his Commander-in-Chief functions to professional soldiers. The declaration of Peace! initiates the transformation from warrior to citizen. The soldier symbolically re-dresses as businessman, teacher, laborer, or dancer. As the soldier achieves peace with himself and immerses his warrior self within his citizen self, so the People come to be at peace.

My sons, we must accept this tragic situation that since Vietnam was not declared neither has it begun or ended. Yet you and I have fingered the Wall. We have touched this collective marker and held in our hearts our own familial loss. We know that Vietnam existed, was...exists, is. You ask, If Vietnam was not a war, what was it? How can we of the "Vietnam War generation" explain and interpret our experience? Surely something happened, but what?

Because it was undeclared I cannot, my generation cannot, speak in traditional ways about Vietnam. We cannot repeat the Call which we did not hear. Yet though undeclared, Vietnam communicated. And this is where it crosses over into mystery, mystification, bafflement and assumes the shape of specter, of haunting and ethereal spirits. Vietnam Undeclared is an historic first, an anthropological novelty. For Vietnam Undeclared is a People warring while denying they are at war; as such Vietnam is a peculiar communication.

More, Vietnam Undeclared is a People warring with itself. "Vietnam" has come to mean the way we in America warred/war against ourselves. It was as much the mindless abandonment of troops in Indochina as it was the mindful engagement with citizen protestors in the streets with the domestic police.

Yes, this is the connection. "Vietnam" is more than war. It is more than a forlorn peasant country in Indochina. It is more than mass marches on Washington, DC. "Vietnam" is more than Undeclared—it is a communication of something previously unarticulated, never before grasped.

I tremble as "Vietnam" screeches through my mind, sweats my palms, races my heart, and drags nightmares and dreadful visions into daylight.

My sons, grasp my hands, look more closely with me at the ritual of war as it has played itself on the small stage of our own family.

\- 2 -

Why did the political leaders—the Nation's Fathers—not declare the war? Why did they send their sons off without ritual? Clearly, the character of the relationship between fathers and sons had changed since the last ritualized wars, the World Wars, I and II: the wars to end all wars.

The myth and ritual of World War II

My father told World War II stories within a framework of time and space. Without stating it as such he set the war's boundaries by the rituals of entry and exit. December 7, 1941 was the date which tethered the ritual. He detailed where he was when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He cited the city, described the room and the radio set through which FDR declared the war, and he interpreted that day and speech as the moment of his commitment—he left three children, two children and a pregnant wife, and a career job to enlist. From that day forward he did not look back. He had no moral doubts. Emotionally, he was at war. He was America at war.

While never wavering in his patriotic and moral duty, he hated war. His letters from the Pacific stated: "Dear Sweetheart...as I walk along and see the rows and rows of white crosses, my only consolation is that in twenty years to twenty-five years our sons will not have to go to war." This was more than belief, it was passionate emotion; it was his soul as father. It was a clear and straightforward statement of his connection to his God, a God who would—through him as soldier—redeem and triumph. Who would—through hated war—bring peace, and end war for his sons.

World War II soldiers knew that it was the war to end all wars. Deep within their souls they felt the hatred for the Public Enemy: Adolf Hitler and the German People (the source of Axis fascism). Their cause was just, more it was eschatological—a battle of Final Days where loss meant the obliteration of the moral foundation of Western Christian culture. There was scant public discussion about the economic or political benefits of conquering Germany, Italy or Japan. Rather, it was a battle between Fatherlands. It was a battle of truly mythic stature: at stake was the World, all peoples of every nation—despite any individual nation's neutrality, the soldier knew that he fought to save all nations from the demonic Enemy.

As WWII veterans recount their story, the mythic power of war becomes manifest. For them the familial bond was severed and the brother named as enemy. Consider that many, like my father, were proud ethnic Germans. He spoke German until he was four years old—in a second generation American home in northern New Jersey. Since he was both college educated and a chemist he was followed by the FBI until he volunteered. They were seeking an answer to the question: Was he an American? Or a German American? Or a German spy? Despite his strong ethnic ties, the power of the war myth distanced him from his Teutonic kin—the brother was named Enemy. For my father, in Adolf Hitler, the presence of evil was personified.

After the ritual of Boot Camp and the confirmation of their soldier status, America became a Warrior Nation and the slaughter of Germans (and all Axis participants: Italians, French, Japanese) by ethnic brothers was done with ardor and heroic charge. Indeed, like so many families, there were familial German Kronckes to be slain!

Boot Camp was not just a military experience, becoming a soldier was not just a social status or a career move. Rather it was a spiritually measured moment. My father went off to war "for the duration." Time was suspended—there was only Now, no future. Space was altered—the Home Front was wherever the soldier went. America as geography disappeared to be replaced by Democracy. The defense of the Homeland then took place wherever the soldier went. As my father's letters indicated he was "Somewhere in the Pacific"... and it could just as well have been "Somewhere in Italy" or England or North Africa or the Atlantic. National boundaries ceased to exist, replaced by a sense of "where" spoken of in terms of presence. My father, as all soldiers, was where Democracy fought Nazi Fascism. Such was the mythic space they marched through, cruised towards, and flew over. It was a landscape of Will and Duty. It was a battleground from which they would not, could not, return except in Final Victory or Defeat.

When it did end—again, moments captured with snapshot detail and accuracy—"Victory in Europe!" (May 8, 1945) and "VJ Day!" (September 2, 1945)—only after these events would (could) their war days be numbered. Only then could a calendar be xed and a quantifiable number be given to a soldier's "duration"—his "time of service" calculated.

My father came home, paraded here and there, and then placed his "Lieutenant, Junior Grade" uniform in mothballs, hugged me (a toddler), and resumed his job as chemist. For a time he kept in touch with a few buddies, at times he told stories—always wistful and humorous—until the specter of the Public Enemy ebbed in his and the nation's soul. He was home. His family was safe. The world was at Peace.

War had taken him out of ordinary time and when completed returned him. The "Call to Arms!" had been answered. With a clear sense of what had happened, when it had happened, and why it had happened, my father joined the millions of other World War II vets and relegated "WWII" to collective memory. It was ended, it was over. Its reality only relivable on appointed mythic days (Memorial Day, Fourth of July) when social and cultural ritual sanctioned a restricted immersion back into the timeless, spaceless and extraordinary experience called the Big War.

These cyclical holidays healed my father. For although war ceases for the collective, the drop out of time and space into the mythic can never be fully contained by the individual. He has lived as an action of his God. He was selected and chosen. He transcended his own ethical and moral consciousness. War spiritually transformed him, and he exited war struggling to contain his heart, mind and soul in the mundane confinements of the everyday. Within each calendar year, the veteran must have extraordinary, cathartic days during which he relives and transforms himself, momentarily, into soldier. These are days of memory, replete with the twin releases of grief and celebration. They are days when the collective once again issues the Call for War, recounts the details of battle, and sounds with the setting sun the Call for Peace. Such holidays (true holy days) made my father whole and were testimony to me that I too could be soldier and a faithfully spiritual man.

The battle of the Gods

My father was empowered by ritual to know and sense the presence of the Public Enemy. Why then did my father's generation not so empower mine? Why did my President and Congress not declare the Vietnam War? The Bay of Tonkin Resolution which apologists cite as the declaration was known to be a sham as it was written. It was a Presidential excuse, a ruse on Congress—an Executive mandate but an unofficial act. Such a Resolution did not possess the stature of a ritual declaration in that President Johnson acted as an individual and not as Commander-in-Chief and so lacked the stature of Heroic Father. He, paradoxically, usurped the power with which he could have been invested if he had enacted the ritual by moving Congress to declare war and so unify the Will and Spirit of the People through his own will and spirit.

The president's usurpation can be explained when one foundational difference between my father's and my time is clearly exposed: the existence of a "peacetime draft." After World War II President Truman did not disband the draft. The professional army not only began to grow, it became a foundational and stable part of the national economy. President Eisenhower, a heralded soldier president, described this condition as the emergence of "the military industrial complex." Among the many things this revealed was the acceptance of the fact of perpetual war. While I grew up in the era of the Cold War, it was anything but cold. Rather the heart of the People raced in a state of perpetual fear and war readiness. We Americans remained stuck in a never-ending state of war-making.

By deciding not to end WWII's draft when the truce was signed (as was the government's way throughout America's history), Truman denied World War II a complete exit ritual, a full return to Peace. "They shout 'Peace! Peace!' when there is no peace!" (Jeremiah 6:14) aptly describes the condition. America remained mapped in war terminology as a "Democracy," and it never returned to existence as a geographical place. Peculiarly, Americans continued to live in eschatological tension—as if time was still suspended and each day was but one in the Final Days. It was claimed that the world was not yet safe for Democracy. This was a critical fact. It meant accepting that World War II never brought Peace. Battlefront hostilities ceased but the ritual reality persisted. Boot Camp was not broken. The People's Will and Spirit was kept at war's feverish pitch, fueled by the apocalyptic imagery of an imminent nuclear holocaust.

President Johnson's usurpation was possible because the right and power to declare war was not returned to the People after World War II. This right and power is returned when the president puts down his mythic mantle as Commander-in-Chief as Peace is accepted. Truman, by instituting the peacetime draft, rejected the surrender and submission of the Enemy. Although the visual presence of Nazis and the Chrysanthemum Emperor faded, they perdured invisibly through every anti-Democratic evil which could be named and numbered. Consider that Truman dropped the Atomic Bomb but declared that it had only obliterated the two cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—it had not eradicated the Public Enemy and his evil—an evil that morphed from Nazism to Communism. In point of fact, by maintaining a peacetime draft Truman revealed quite clearly that the war had not been won! Consequently, instead of a temporary war time draft which was solely used as an instrument of war time conscription, the draft became a permanent part of American culture, society, and the economy. This permanent draft required a permanent mythic Commander-in-Chief. As Truman surely knew, historically the president was Chief Executive in normal times and Commander-in-Chief in extraordinary times, namely, only when war was declared. Possibly more transformative than his decision to drop the Bomb, President Truman grounded America in a novel mythic structure by institutionalizing the peacetime draft.

At the time, war veterans and Americans in general did not assess the significance of what Truman did because it was a historically unprecedented act. To most it appeared trivial. Numbed by the horrors of hot war, few opposed preparing to fight the emerging Red Menace. Few thought the peacetime draft other than a reasonable and sensible security measure, one taken to ensure that a Public Enemy did not resurrect and catch America unprepared. Only the words "Pearl Harbor" needed to be intoned for all critical questions to be answered and fears calmed. "Democracy must be vigilantly guarded!"

My father and all World War II veterans were deceived and their birthright as warriors stolen by Truman's act. "Victory in Europe!" and "Peace Declared!"— sadly both were lies. They were lies widely believed and ones which the fathers passed onto their sons. The sons—my generation—were raised as Cold Warriors, which was testimony to the incompletion of the ritual and the continuance of the liturgy. We inherited a world at war, not at peace. The Public Enemy was not vanquished, rather only transformed from Hitler into Stalin. Over time these personalities became insignificant as Communism and Socialism—systems and life styles—were identified as the enemies. Such were fitting Public Enemies for Democracy.

In this light, President Johnson could only have acted as he did because he inherited the patrimony of Truman. Johnson could not declare war because America as Democracy was already at war! His Bay of Tonkin Resolution appears as usurpation but in fact he could not usurp what had not been given back to the People. Truman was the first president who subordinated his presidency to his Commander-in-Chief status, and who refused to conclude the ritual of war. Johnson was already Commander-in-Chief—he was not a president in need of a declaration to exercise his perpetual war powers.

Truman's act violated the collective Will and Spirit. He refused to return to the ordinary. He boldly and baldly refused to heed the Call to Peace. He resisted his People's God—the God who warred to bring Peace. Truman refused to exit from the realm of the mythic. His was an act of disobedience fraught with profound, primal consequences. From that day forward, he exercised his presidential powers in terms of his Commander-in-Chief powers. For him, the whole Earth, the world itself became a "global America" as he claimed it as the proper battleground for Democracy. Henceforth, America's self-assigned job was to police the world, and so he set forth to garrison the Earth.

The meaning, function and reality of "solider" was altered. The Cold War's "Peacetime warrior" was either its own boldfaced contradiction in terms or a novel mythic oxymoron. It became the latter in light of its source in the oxymoronic "peacetime draft." Notably, the soldier became an economic unit, a (battle)field-hand for the Endless War economy. He ceased to fight Enemy People rather he slew "isms" such as the "specter of Communism." Boot Camp became a faith-based site of Democratic ritual—a rite of passage for eighteen year old males; a required social experience which validated one's masculinity. Boot Camp became global America's sacramental ritual, somewhat of the stature of Christian Baptism.

The peacetime Draft negated the need for the ritual of public Declaration. It assumed the existence of Endless War, a war which was for "beyond duration," so paradoxically each soldier (as in Vietnam) served a pre-set, restricted term. This was a period that the Vietnam era soldier described not in terms of "war years" but as "drafted for two years." These were years of ordinary time, not extraordinary. Consider: These years were lived in normal calendar time with dates checked off and ticketed for furloughs and R&R. This was so because all time is peacetime insofar as it has become doctrine that "Peace is War"—echoing Aristotle's "We make war that we may live in peace."

Truman's institutionalization of the draft was a priestly act—he propitiated his personal God, the God of War.

Why did Truman do this? Why did he turn from the God of Peacemaking to the God of War-making? Why did he deceive and betray my father and his war's veterans?

No easy answers are forthcoming. Analysts can forward economic, political or social explanations and justifications but they pale in their attempts to grasp the magnitude of Truman's act—for he was the instrument of his God's transformation of the Earth, wherein Endless Warring forever vanquished Peace. In this light Truman suffered Hitler's curse. Both transformed their People into permanent soldiers whom they thrust into an eschatological battle. Both replaced the Will of the People with the Will of the State. Both sought totalitarian powers. Hitler's vision was couched in non-Christian, pagan terms and imagery. Truman's vision in Christian and Democratic terms and imagery. Truman's Christianity was, arguably, a twisted and perverted interpretation and use of mainstream Christianity. Hitler espoused a fascist totalitarianism. Truman conjured a democratic totalitarianism. Both were priests in service to the God of War, whose benediction is George Orwell's "War is Peace." Truly—apocalyptically—since World War II, Americans have lived in a perilous End-Time spiritual state.

The draft as sacramental ritual

If I had ever questioned the foundational ritual and liturgical stature of the Selective Service System, I was no longer left in doubt. My decision not to carry that measly piece of impermanent paper made me a criminal—but now I understood why it also made me a blasphemer!

As I burned my card I encountered the full sacramental import of the act which Truman ritualized. He—not I nor the Christian church nor the People—endowed the tool of conscription with symbolic meaning and power. He redefined the cultural mooring of American society. Of great import was that the State was personified and emboided not in the mythic People but in the political apparatus of government—the government became mythic! Truman defined himself as Military Chief, not as Chief Executive. His retention of his extraordinary war time title of Commander-in-Chief represents a profound mythic break with presidential tradition. Henceforth, fathers and sons...all males...would be bound by and born into conscription. All would be born as children of the Warrior State, and raised in worship of the God of War-making. No longer was the individual family the anchor of society, rather the State was the anchor of the family. The family would henceforth exist to serve the State, not the State to serve the family.

I was born into conscription—it was not a choice as it was for my father. More, there was no life outside of conscription—to defy it was to be imprisoned or exiled. For my generation, the draft card became our foundational bond as males and citizens. In the now mythic government's eyes, to destroy this 1-A card became, paradoxically, a violation of the Biblical command, "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before Me."

The spiritual quest of Vietnam Veterans

The soldier in Vietnam believed that he had answered his country's call to war. He believed that it would culminate in a call to peace. But he found neither war nor peace in their proper mythic mode. Rather he found himself bewildered by the same reactions that I found as a draft resister. His cause was judged ignoble, stupid, meaningless—often derided by older veterans at VFW or American Legion meetings as "just a jungle rumble, not a real war!" By others he was lampooned as a dupe for oil cartels or as a pawn in the CIA's secret global chess game. Upon return, he became ashamed. The accusations of being "a loser" were heightened by an undertone of cowardly criminality. He was made to feel as if he were a murderer and not a soldier.

The import of the lack of ritual Declaration became manifest and magnified by the lack of a ritual exit, a Welcome Home, a victory celebration. Although the president spoke of "Victory for Democracy," he did not—could not—ritually end what had never begun. Many Vets hungered—a hunger never satisfied, sadly, one that cannot be assuaged—for "just a simple word of thanks," a gesture of recognition. In effect, they sought and were denied even a moment of mythic redemption and healing, nary an instance of liturgy.

Vietnam was not a war, rather it was just a phase in the Endless War, a series of battles in the Final Solution—the eschatological peacetime war. Yet, what the high priests of the God of war-making failed to grasp was the individual's critical need for healing ritual entrance into and exit from liturgical war. Although America's People continue to remain in a perpetual state of war, the individual cannot enter the realm of God—become an instrument of God—without ritual. Lacking ritual, the individual can only see himself as a murderer, never as a soldier.

Why was this individual need not fulfilled? Didn't the high priests of war-making understand the importance of ritual and liturgy? As answer, consider that in a totalitarian State the individual is the means to an end, not the end itself. Before World War II, as my father believed, America was a People's Democracy where war had to be declared. It was a society prepared to perform the ritual steps to enter the extraordinary time and space of liturgical war. It was, in brief, a society in service to the God of peacemaking, a service which contained a ritual for a "Just War." It was a society, my father believed, which ultimately sought peace for its individual citizens.

War as prison ritual

The initial Watergate hearings were televised during my first week in prison. I paid little attention to them. I did not need proof of the history of governmental lies and crimes. The details did not fascinate me. All around me the lies were embedded in concrete and iron bars. I was on America's Inside—"in country." Joylessly, I found that the prison population was dominated by veterans of wars and Draft Resistance.

Prison gave me the final clue to Vietnam. Prison had its entrance and exit rituals, but they were enacted solely by the individual isolated from the collective. Going Inside set the individual at war with the State. Prison was its own perpetual state of war-making. The Enemy was defined as the other convict. The spiritual direction announced was, "Do your own time!" This was a statement repeated and supported by the staff's Catholic chaplain's sermons.

"Do your own time!" meant do not form bonds with your fellow convicts. They—other people—were each a Public Enemy. To be redeemed, to be rewarded with "Good Time," I was told to isolate myself from others and submit to the State. I was clearly directed to serve the God of war-making with a purity of heart, which required a renunciation of all my former social and personal bonds, and by doing so merit regeneration through the spiritual discipline of obeying all of the prison's rules. This advice was akin to that forwarded by the head of my former monastic Order. As a monk I was commanded to surrender my will to Father Superior. I was to take no pains to direct my own life rather I was to submit to his Spiritual Direction. The goal of the monastic quest was to strip me of self-centeredness and self-absorption so that I could serve the People of God.

In prison, the Warden wants me to learn to do my own time as the end itself, not as a means to the end of service to the People. He wants to transform me into a citizen who defines his existence as service to the State. If I undergo this transformation, I am assured, I will be successful in my return to the Free World.

"Do your own time!" describes the mythic state where every person is a gook. It is a state of perpetual war.

Vietnam, like prison, was a sentence, meted out as the penalty for theft or rape or drug dealing was—a tour for me of "Five years!" Inside prison I was aware of the perpetual state of war which certain Americans are born into because of skin color or economic status. It is commonplace to state that prison is filled with minorities, the lower class, and functional illiterates. It became commonly understood that the ranks of the in-country, battlefield "grunts" were filled by Americans of like description.

"Do your own time!" is all that anyone can do during Endless War. There is no ritual way to transcend one's individuality and bond with the People. There are no collective rituals of entrance and exit offered. Although prisoners go through a Boot Camp like entrance, they too are never forgiven and reconciled. They are never healed. They can never return Home. They are accursed like Cain and endlessly wander—most circling back into prison.

My sons, in this light, it is clear why Vietnam Veterans can never come Home. There is no Home for a country perpetually at war. There is only the battlefield. What the veterans have been forced to learn—although not accept—is that the State which worships the God of War-making has no place for soldiers, only criminals. Yes, only war criminals. Not soldiers but marauders, terrorists, assassins—genocidal maniacs. In Endless War there is only one moral rule—that there are no moral rules! "Burn every village." The State wants the veteran to do his own time and live isolated from his brother, who is forever a Public Enemy.

The State which worships the God of War has its self preservation not that of the individual soldier as its primary End. Since it defines itself as perpetually at war, its Peace is War-making. The Vietnam Veteran, in the State's mind, must live in the mythic moment, forever. However—tragically—the individual cannot live continually in eschatological tension, as if in the Final Days. To do so is to never be made whole or healed. To do so is to live criminally. Denied exit from this myth, the veteran comes to see himself as Pubic Enemy... and his final act of Duty is suicide—liturgical self murder.

Summary of Pathway #1

My storyline is that of a white, middle-class, conservative, East Coast, German-Irish Roman Catholic who became a seminarian, young monk, and lay theologian, and who upon hearing the moral call of his Church, through Vatican II, resisted what he perceived to be an illegitimate authority. The joke is on me, clearly, for it was not illegitimate. In fact it legitimately rendered me "irrelevant and immaterial," convicted me as a violent felon, and sentenced me to five years in federal prison. I simply had to learn what type of authority it was and in what set of values it grounded its legitimacy.

Why I Resisted stemmed from several conscious intellectual and moral decisions, but what proved more revealing were those things that drove me subconsciously. I inherited from my father a moral vision that was grounded in his own act of resistance to illegitimate authority, re: the Manhattan Project, yet a moral action that I came to know only after he passed away.

While I grounded my illegal activities and moral civil disobedience in the values of the biblical theological tradition, notably as mediated through the Documents of Vatican II and the visionary writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., I eventually found myself as a theological outsider and, by some accounts, a theological heretic.

The experiences on Pathway#1 found expression in "Vietnam Undeclared," an account I gave to my sons about what I learned about the function of war-making in American society. I shared that my anti-war efforts failed. All that I could conclude and share with my sons was that Americans tell themselves a mythic story wherein they are specially Chosen to bring order and democracy to the world. I explained how war became a ritual practice and how through the liturgical practices of waging war that they and all young men were supposed to discover their manhood as killers for God and Country. Finally, I shared that I continue to strive everyday to "live as if I am no one's enemy." I showed them the pathway of the peace criminal, as I have to you.

Onward!

I stated that I started writing two essays in 1983. After "Vietnam Undeclared," the second one, "Prison, Bottoming out, the Mother," which expressed what I experienced and learned while in the penitentiary came quickly on the heels of the first. I wrote it because I was perplexed that while in the most forlorn sector of my personal Dark Night that I hadn't killed myself. I had heard a fair number of inmate stories that later ended up with suicide, so I asked, "Francis, why didn't you off yourself while in prison?" To answer it, I had to venture back into prison's darkness. Follow me there now on Pathway #2.

Pathway #2: Subhuman
Chapter 5: Subhumans live "Inside"

Q: _How did I become a subhuman?_

A: **By "doing time" on the Inside as 8867-147**.

Still reeling from the Judge's "irrelevant and immaterial" prestidigitation—Shazam!—my heart and soul fearfully pondered: What awaits me in prison? The question haunted me while I treaded water for six anxious months expecting each day to receive my appellate decision and begin my inevitable journey to federal prison. During this unsettling period, people—close friends, family, and just met strangers—freely gave advice about what I should do while imprisoned. Their comments ranged from assurance that prison would be no harder than the novitiate I had endured with the Franciscans, to encouragement that prison, though a satanic hell, would become a crucible in which my spirit would be purified. However, my life had passed the point where I trusted what anyone said. I had trespassed the boundary of sanity and mistrusted even my own thoughts. In the spring of 1972, as a captured enemy—a veritable Prisoner of War—I prepared to enter Sandstone Federal Correctional Institution (FCI).

What happened when I was escorted by a federal Marshal from the Hennepin County jail to Sandstone and entered the doorway marked "Admission and Orientation"? Here is where my difficulty with you—yes, with you—begins. As I took my first step inside a federal prison so, unknowingly to myself at the time, I took my last step in the outside world. Inmates term prison the Inside and call the Outside world the "Free World." What did I leave behind Outside? Basically, the everyday framework of intellectual and experiential references that I shared with you as a non-prisoner. You remained a citizen with rights (personal, social, political) who could exercise a modicum of control over your private and public surroundings. I became a "slave of the State." At the time, I had no idea what that exactly meant. I knew the phrase but it did not evoke any emotions, neither fear nor dread—which were waiting for me. Quickly I learned that I had left behind the world that values common sense, logic, moral truths, decency, freedom...and entered a locked-down, alien, terrorizing, and intensely degrading environment. My step Inside was also the beginning of a descent—into a bottomless pit, a hellish sector of human existence best described as "where everything human is soon absent." Not unexpectedly, my white-male, middle-class, highly educated skin was also shed as I stepped into the A&O.

_So here is my difficulty_ : How can I convey to you what happened to me when Inside? Or using Inside rap: How can I get motherfucking you to take your fucking-A head out of your goddam asshole and...? See my problem? You don't like that language, right? And not repulsing you by using the Inside palaver of scatological language is the least of my challenges here.

I anticipate that you have never been Inside. Okay, maybe jail for a DUI or fraternity prank, even busted for nonviolent protesting, but not "doing time," that is, down for a stretch. As is popular, you probably accept that prison tries to or at least should "scare straight" an inmate, that is, change a convict's mind. And, that once the con finally figures out how the "real world" works, he'll wake up yearning for a 9 to 5 job at Walmart, a seat in a pew, and start attending AA.

As to reforming my mind, truth be told, prison was only secondarily concerned about that. Its primary focus was on my body. Its goal was to have me experience my subhuman body—and to forever live as a subhuman: constantly living in fear and dread of violent attack, with a broken human spirit, hopeless, and an abiding sense of myself as worthless, a piece of social offal. Now here's where I might lose you, big time. I'm going to provide your mind with things to mull over, but my main effort on Pathway #2 is to convince you that if you are to grasp what it's like on the Inside that you have to begin feeling differently—ultimately, to sense your own subhuman body. Why? Because the most significant insight I obtained when Inside was that I could only become a "real human person" if I made myself manifest as both human and subhuman.

To sense your own subhuman body requires that you venture Inside. Should you run out, commit a crime, and get locked up? Not really. As I will guide you, you can enter Inside but only if you are willing to execute an escape from your everyday world—"Go over the wall!"

How can I effectively facilitate your escape? I'll guide you by mingling two types of stories. First, as on Pathway #1, I'll continue to describe and interpret my experiences in a way that enables you to be an observer, one who might be stirred by sympathy and empathy—Gasp! or shed a tear, stuff like that. Yet, second, to be true to myself and my Inside experience I need to enable you to directly feel being imprisoned. For that I've written a series of "Rung" stories. These are "dark side" vignettes that aim to stir-up a bit of emotional unrest which hopefully leads to some insights about yourself as you assess your heartfelt reactions to these Inside stories. You will go down three Rungs, slowly descending into the depths of the Inside to eventually end up "where everything human is soon absent." This is definitely not a nice or emotionally safe place to be, but if you get there, you'll certainly have escaped your everyday world. Believe me, these Rung stories are not ones that I find easy to re-read—as they are written in psychic blood and spit.

_Take heed_ : The Rung stories are interspersed throughout the text to intentionally stop you from thinking for a moment and take a meditative pause, to hopefully slowly awaken your subhuman senses. Don't try and read them all at once. If you do that you will fail yourself, that is, if you seriously intend to experience the Inside. Sit with Rung #1 stories a bit. Orient yourself to the Inside's everydayness. However, know that when you get to Rung #2 and #3 stories that you are descending into darker sectors of the human heart. Since I want to guide you into the Inside and not just freak you out, I have placed Rung #3's most disturbing stories in Appendix A.

I suggest, moreover, that you read Appendix A only after you finish the book and have the perspective of Pathway #3. Why? Because the three Pathways are dynamically linked. Pathway #2 Rung stories convey life on the Inside but they are also used on Pathway #3 as meditative material to assist you in a ritual practice that enables you to safely descend down the Rungs, embody your subhuman self, and ascend back up to embody Pathway #3's vision that empowers you to "dwell peacefully and comfortably at home on the Living Earth." The value and rightness of Pathway #3's vision will only make sense after you wend and work your way through Pathway #2's subhuman experiences. Then, as meditative aids, reading the Appendix stories will deepen your grasp on the Inside and your own subhumanity. My hope is, as you make present both your human and subhuman bodies, that you will experience a fresh and ecstatic sense of yourself as a real human person.

It is evident that I am going to make more than a few off-putting statements—some that might also appear weird and offbeat. But Pathway#2 is nothing if not a journey marked by experiences you have never had. My three key opening statements about Inside experiences are:

1)On the Inside you become "twice-bodied." You have two personal bodies. Not two concepts of your body but actually two bodies. One is human and the other subhuman. As you have five human senses so do you five subhuman senses. While you are one-bodied now, you can become twice-bodied. If you embody both your humanness and subhumanness you then will become a "real human person."

2)There are two dimensions to everyday reality: the "Shadow realm" and the "Sunlight realm." These realms are physically entered and exited through identifiable geographical, spatial localities, and brick-and-mortar institutions.

3)The journey through the Shadow realm is told through a Captive's "sad story," and the one through the Sunlight realm through a Captor's "glad story."

Being in prison "doing time" caused an upheaval and a revolution in respect to just about everything that I had been told to date in constituted truth and reality—that everything I had learned from my family, Church, and the ivied halls of academe was fundamentally screwed up.

Right now my working assumption is that what I have just written sounds pretty over the top if not borderline psychotic. Let me say that before prison I would have had a similar reaction.

My subhuman body

_Awake!_ I underwent a qualitative, heartfelt human transformation—I became a subhuman. Do I truly mean this? What could I mean if I do? Qualitative transformation: Is this possible? It is, but only when you descend into the Inside sector of heartfelt absence and abandonment _where everything human is soon absent_. This is a necessary descent because it is only when in the pit of subhumanness that are you empowered to rise and embrace your humanness and so embody being a real human person.

This Inside experience of "absent" ignited a revolution in my understanding of the physical world both human and subhuman. Like you do now, before prison, I had only one body—human blood and flesh. Prison forced me to sense and accept my second body—subhuman blood and flesh. Thereafter, I began living as "twice-bodied." I hope that this sounds as bizarre as I felt as I was upended and swept away by this upheaval.

Your body: I want you to pause for a moment and ask yourself how open you are to experiencing a physical, sensual upheaval in your sense of body and self? I'm not talking about changing how you think as much as about how you embody your personal self. Are you open to the possibility that you've lived your life to date missing your subhuman body? More, that unless and until you embody your subhuman self that you cannot become a real human person?

As prison changed how I experienced and came to understand my body so it did likewise to my sense of location—of place and time. The Inside is physically a Shadow realm and the Outside is a Sunlight realm.

Inside's Shadow and Outside's Sunlight realms

As one-bodied if I were asked, Where are you? Or, Where do you live? I had readily accessible tools at hand to accurately answer. I might say, "I am serving time in Sandstone F.C.I." Or, "I live in Hastings, Minnesota." More, my saying that "I am an American" would provide multiple answers as to my location in terms of place and time: geographical, social, and cultural locations. In stark contrast I had no such tools available to aid me in understanding what was happening as I became twice-bodied. Just the realization that I was a "subhuman" threw me outside of any intellectual or emotional framework I had used to explain who "Francis X. Kroncke" was up to that time. I had never been asked or ever had any reason to ask, "Who are the subhumans? Where are they located?" In truth I didn't even know that subhumans existed. More, I certainly would not have known where to look. There were no atlases handy with maps to help locate subhumans.

_Listen up_ : There is an atlas that will reveal their locations. It's the exact atlas you use to locate where you are right now. The issue is not in finding an atlas as it is in knowing how to read the legend and follow directions. Sandstone, Minnesota, for example, is off Old Highway 61, north and east of the Twin Cities, just past Hinckley on your way to Duluth—once in town just follow the signs to the FCI. Now, let me ask you to just accept for the moment that when you get there you also arrive at a physical and geographic location on the Inside where subhumans live.

Prison is called many things: the penitentiary, the Big House, the slammer, the clink, etc., but the Inside works as a good subhuman locator term. Inside and Outside are interrelated and inseparable concepts, you can't have one without the other. However this is not a rigid duality. Actually, it is a quite fluid locator term. It helps to look at this type of connectedness as illustrated by the image of a Mobius strip which is a two-dimensional sheet with only one surface. You keep walking straight ahead and suddenly you are Inside from the Outside pathway, then Outside from the Inside. Although you stay on the same pathway you shift dimensions.

I know that this might sound just a bit too clever. Like I'm just trying to tweak your nose and say, "See, the Inside, it's right there!" as if you were stupid or something. But that's not what I'm doing. I'm actually saying that there is a physical geography to the Inside world of subhumans. Prison is just one location. It happens to be a location where the worlds of Outside humans and Inside subhumans visually and viscerally interact. While walking around one locale, say the Inside, you shift into the other, here Outside, dimension. You can also look at the interconnections between the Inside and Outside like a subway system map, and using the image of a subhuman underground is apt.

As hard as your one-bodied self might be straining right now to believe me, just know that the twice-bodied subhumans have no problem in easily navigating between the Inside and the Outside. For them the stairway up and out of the underground, so to speak, is through the Shadow realm into the Sunlight realm. This Shadow realm is an Inside site where unsettling, disturbing, often cruel and evil things happen. It is where subhumans gather and locate. In prison the daily routine centers around descents into and ascents out of various Shadow sectors. How an inmate navigates and handles Shadow events determines if he will ever truly get out of the Inside—or remain an imprisoned Captive all his life, "doing time on the Inside" even if released from the institution. One-body human Captors guard the border between the Shadow and Sunlight realms. Twice-bodied subhuman Captives live Inside and venture Outside.

Twice-bodied subhumans spend their whole lives moving in and out of the Inside's Shadow realm into the Outside's Sunlight realm, which is the Captor's only realm. While Captors never intend to enter the Shadow realm, Captives purposively enter the Sunlight realm because that is where their crimes take place. I explore this critical point more thoroughly below.

For now, look at the relationship between the Shadow and Sunlight realms a bit like a stage production as seen by young children. What goes on behind the curtains and decorative props is unseen by and basically unknown to the youths who are delighting in the Sunlight story being enacted. Throw a bit of malice and evil intent into the minds and hearts of the stage crew and things go awry, sometimes hilariously, others tragically, but still remain unseen and unknown. In terms of the crime world the audience is the straight world of one-bodied folk whom the twice-bodied prey on because they know how the Shadow and Sunlight realms interconnect whereas the Sunlight folk rarely know much about the Shadow realm.

The Shadow realm has its own language and imagery which is expressed through a "sad story." The Sunlight realm has a "glad story."

Sunlight and Shadow stories

The Sunlight glad story expresses your upbeat, positive outlook on life. It makes you feel whole, healthy and happy. For some it is the story of the "American Dream." For others it is one of personal rescue from their own inner darkness, "Jesus Saves." Or, the mindful joy of "Be here now." Hearing it makes you feel that all is right with the world. It makes you feel glad to be alive and human. It fills you with a heartfelt sense that everyone can work together, doing and being Good: "Peace, Justice and the American Way!" It makes you want to dance in the streets. "And God saw that it was good."

The Shadow sad story takes you into hellish depths of darkness, of evil both of the individual and group. It makes you moan the deep down dirty blues. It engenders feelings of depression, oppression and degradation. The Christian interpretation of the biblical tradition speaks of Original Sin, human depravity, and murderous family strife. Other sad stories regale humans with tales about their flawed, savage human nature sourced in inheritable violent genes. Or make a virtue out of selfishness ("Greed is good!"). Or enslave through lies (the Nazis' "Arbeit Macht Frei"—"Work makes you free!"). In a sad story other people—the "Other"—are always threats to you, named as The Enemy, often reviled with racist or sexist taunts ("The only good injun is a dead injun!" "Slap the bitch!"). Note well: My claim is that you have both a sad and a glad story, and that they are dynamically interrelated. This means that you hear the Shadow sad story as an undercurrent in the Sunlight glad story, and vice versa.

In his Sunlight story the Captor's self-perceived role is to carry out justice and protect society from the Shadow inmates. On its own terms it is an upbeat, empowering story. In it the Captor is good and the Captives are bad. Of note, and a recurring theme of Outlaw Visions which I will return to often, is that the Captor claims that in his Sunlight realm there is no Shadow—or at least that there should not be any Shadow. If he could, the Captor would obliterate the Shadow realm. In this vein I heard, more than once, a guard swear that he'd love to "Kill every motherfucking con in this joint!" Such a primal wish was ground for this key insight about the Captor's Sunlight story, that is, that it is not so much one about control and punishment as it is about the denial of the existence of the Shadow realm and/or an effort to obliterate it...and all subhumans in the process.

_Pause_ : I need you to realize how critically important I find this Captor denial and obliteration of the Shadow to be. I admit that this confused me at first because of my one-bodied upbringing. Let me ask, what are you answers to: What is prison's objective? Is it to reform and/or rehabilitate—turn bad guys into good guys? Is it to horrify and punish and so potentially scare guys into going straight? Or—as I judge them—are these questions wrongheaded? Instead, should you be asking yourself, "Are prisons more about me than about them? What is prison's objective in terms of my world? Is it to isolate me from the Shadow realm and keep me Outside in my Sunlight realm? In effect, for all practical purposes, to prevent me from entering the Shadow realm?" This is what I found to be true and factual, yet I realize that such an experiential insight can only become yours after you embody your own subhumanness—which is the ultimate insight of Pathway #2 and which Pathway #3 enables you to achieve through certain ritual practices. Right now, just keep these questions in mind as we proceed.

Summary

Prison—the Inside—redefined my concept of and caused an upheaval in my sensate experience of everyday reality. I found that prison was inhabited by one-bodied humans and twice-bodied subhumans—Captors and Captives. Subhumans lived on the Inside and humans on the Outside. Every day each—knowingly or not—moved in and out of sectors of the Shadow and Sunlight realms as they embodied, respectively, their "sad story" and "glad story." Each day the Captor relentlessly sought to avoid and/or obliterate the Shadow realm. However, it is vitally necessary to descend into the Shadow realm, deep into the sector "where everything human is soon absent" to embrace your subhumanness and so ascend into the Sunlight to experience yourself as a "real human person."
Chapter 6: Inside discoveries

Jail

The first step Inside was going back to the county jail where I and the others had spent seven days, held on the charge of "sabotage of the national defense" and before our initial bond of $50,000 was reduced to ten and we got out to prepare for trial. The county jail is a holding area. Most guys are waiting to get arraigned or for someone to post bail. It is also the way station on the road to the federal penitentiary, like a Greyhound Bus terminal—"Now boarding on Track Number 13!" I returned as "Guilty!"—convicted of a crime committed "by force, violence or otherwise." I would henceforth remain classified as a "violent felon" for destroying the Selective Service's "paper body" draft cards.

Every morning's waking is surreal. My eyes snap open in reflex to some guard's harsh yelling about something or at someone. In noisy tandem, a master control gate starts to groan, screech and clang, setting off a series of smaller metallic echoes as each individual cellblock cage clanks open in sequence. Guys clamber down iron stairwells to the common area to gather what the Keeper leaves. It's breakfast or something like that. Soggy buns and weak coffee. Half-pints of warm OJ. Fatigued, I roll off my iron-framed cot and soon join the line shuffling towards chow. I'm ever amused: "Free room! Free food! Free TV!" Ain't America grand.

Half-awake, I'm counting and this is the sixth day back Inside, a week of dawdling, on hold for the federal Marshal to arrive and transport me upstate to Sandstone, a medium-security prison. Back in my cell I plop down on my cot and start eating but not before I gag a bit as the vividly acrid stink of my piss-soaked, lumpy and soggy, bug infested jailhouse mattress exudes a puff of fetid air that rises once again to dust me all over and around. Jail's aroma of sanctity! Hell, these aren't cells, they're cages in a stinking human zoo. Iron bars at every turn. No walls between cells. Not a sliver of personal privacy possible. Total naked exposure: stinky.

Music soothes the wild beast? Set high on the corridor walls of the cellblock four TV stations blare at high volume from sunup to sundown. They are beyond reach, so remain locked on the same station. Their relentless drone is an irksome annoyance—a grating buzz! Each tier has but one shower which in no time is plugged up and flooding back. Plus one communal razor blade and a tiny Holiday Inn size bar of soap to wash and shave some thirty-plus men. Three times a day we line up—Keepers slopping vittles on plastic trays. The stuff is without fail some wretched, overcooked gunk. If you crave a snack or a small luxury like a comb, you have to negotiate with the old black inmate "trustee" who runs the commissary.

The hours creep around, strangled by idling intensity. I look about and know that most guys are "career" criminals, ones statistically accounted as likely to never break the cycle of recidivism. I've never remotely been in a place that seethes with such unrelenting negative energy. The walls, the bars, the bare light bulbs, the lidless crappers, everything screams out, "You're a piece of shit, loser asshole!"

My feral outlaw brain gleans a lot. With eyes closed shut, the others are mostly black and/or poor. With ears deafened, the others are semi to completely illiterate. Without even bothering to voice the question comes the answer that very few inmates grasp the socio-political determinants of their being locked-up. Most just want to get back Outside and try once again to beat the odds. Should I opine, "It's depressing!"? Or just cynically laugh? These are society's dregs, its misfits, its dropouts, each an outlaw. Although they have "street smarts" they compulsively lose out to desperation—somewhat Pollyannaish they tempt fate time and again ever sure that they've finally found a short cut to the Big Kill. Ha. Too many times the short cut ends up being a gun or a fist in the kisser. Christ! Just another group of men constantly at war. I think my rap-partner-in-crime Mike and I are the only first time offenders on this cellblock. Me, a stone cold jailhouse virgin...darkness relentlessly frightens and nightmares break me. I shudder and am fitfully sleepy even when awake.

Sandstone, FCI—Segregation

In mid-June 1972, handcuffed and leg-chained, hobbling from the Marshal's car to the prison's side-door, "Admission and Orientation," I became one of them—an inmate.

"Wait here for the Corridor Captain." That's what the Admission officer orders. So I don't move, dressed in my brand new loose-fitting khakis and glossy black shoes. On hold going nowhere, idling in my just deodorized and disinfected body, having been sprayed for lice and bugs and whatever. The A&O guard purified me with an insect spray can. Pump, swish. Even around the balls and onto my anal sphincter—pump, pump, _swwwiiishh_ —up arms to the pits and lastly misting my hair. "Close your eyes. Hold your breath." Swish, swish. I can't help myself, a flashback: His is a priestly Baptismal aspersion, the initiatory ritual for my entry into the Order of the Penitentiary— _Novus Ordo Seclorum_. I'm more bemused than chuckling.

I wondered if I'd be hassled about my hair—robust dark beard and neck-tickling curls were a witness to the six month hiatus between sentencing and caging, and also to my post-trial desire to once again look like a radical. However, such did I submit to a friendly barber several days before final surrender. Yet I kept my moustache and broad-base sideburns—still looking good in a radical chic way. A fellow Resister, out on parole, told me that the lip hair and sides would pass prison muster. Nevertheless, I anticipated getting some flak, just some shit for disciplinary reasons. "You think that's short?" They'd show me "short." But no flak came.

What was truly curious was the total lack of hassle. My admission, purification, registration, and allocation were routine—by the book, as with any bureaucracy. No drama, no hazing, no screaming, shouting, or beating. No Greek chorus at the Gate to Hades elevating the operatic conversation from the mundane to the sublime. I just did as directed—no place to go, no place to hide!

Amusingly, it is monastically quiet in the Admission area—Glad to be out of that freaking jail! I'm the sole aspirant. The Admission officer is lean on chatter, more of a steely-eye than a talker. All in all, in a timely and tidy process I'm ready-to-go. He closed my file and almost smiled, "One new commitment, ready to be released to the population." These words float in my head as I glance up and down the empty corridor. Where is everybody?

I crane to peek through a side window but fail to spy but a furtive figure or two dash at distant sight. Inmates, I surmise because of the khaki blur. Where is this population? How these guys play with words! Me, a new "commitment." Damn, I'm not committed to them.

"You," the authoritative command snaps ."You there. What's your number?"

I pivot towards the figure appearing at my right, a six-foot-five tower of military hewn flesh. Clean hands, clean face, cleanly shaved, cleanly pressed trousers and shirt, cleanly polished shoes, cleanly groomed hair. All clean.

This has to be the Corridor Captain.

Eye to eye, I reflexively start to greet him—"Hi!"—take a step towards the Captain as if to shake his hand but something jerks me back; I freeze. The county jailor's sweet goodbye rings in my ears, "You're nothing but dog shit in here, fool!"

"...number?" Francis no longer exists. He's been processed. Institutionalized. Digitized. Tagged. He's nobody, invisible to all and to everyone he's ever known.

Again, snapped: "You—what's your number?"

My lips part but nothing slips out. My arms can't move, remain tightly locked around a bedding bundle against my lower chest. I'm at stone-cold mute for a long moment; worse, an embarrassed blush flits across my face. What eventually stumbles out is, "Kroncke...err, 8...867...err...147."

Unfazed by my faltering answer, the Corridor Captain steps past me, moving some six feet down the hall to a knobless door which he keys, unlocks and opens. I instinctively follow. We walk up a flight of stairs, take a right, there are only two doors, one locked, one half-way ajar. I hesitate; he eye motions, Get inside, idiot!

I step into a single-bed cell unit. I had noticed that there was only one other door on this floor, so this isn't a cell block. Isolation? I'm a bit caught off-guard. Whatever! After loitering in the sweaty, cramped, and odiferous cage back in County, I'm delighted to instantly observe that the crapper comes with a lid.

"Supper will be up in 'bout five minutes. Make the room." The Captain locks the cell and leaves.

Alone, unmoving, I scan every corner, wall and facet of the unit. For minutes I remain immobile, standing like a sculpture lost from a museum. So this is solitary? The hole? Why I'm in solitary confuses me. It's a twist that doesn't compute. Still like stone, I don't flinch or even squint when the door grate behind me slides open with a rattling squeak.

"There's books here, if you read."

I don't answer. The grate scratchily closes on a ten-by-twelve-foot pastel blue cell: one sink with safety-glass mirror, one iron-frame bed, one barred window situated slightly above average hairline, covered with a length of steel screen, also pastel blue. The ceiling holds a recessed, wire-mesh-sealed bank of three fluorescent lights—the on/off switch is outside the cell. The mesh is a matching pastel blue. What the—?

"Is this the fucking Holiday Inn?" I mockingly intone. No one answers. I'm anchored, stuck there, bedding bundle slumping in my arms, scanning nervously, inspecting every detail, scrutinizing the room like a wary traveler in a foreign land checking for bugs, snakes, and pestilent vermin, all waiting in ambush .

As the Institution intends, mine is a fast check-in into a deep depression. Just an hour Inside and already sunk into despondency. A pastel blue fucking! depression. What type of pervert decorated this solitary suite? Cloud-puff blue oozing sweetheart warmth; cozy fluorescent lighting.

As if cued, a few rays of sunshine cheerily gambol into the cell, wrapped in a chuckle of sky.

As if cued, rage boils and bubbles up from within me: Powerless—absolute, utter powerlessness. Trapped—no way out!

"Jesus Christ, they're still fucking with me!" I toss my bundle on the unmade bed. Its summer-camp coiled bedsprings whimper and squeal. Motionless again, I remain fixed to the spot.

**Black** , _not_ blue—I want black. Isolation. The Hole. It should be dark as sin. I need a touchstone. Blue's all wrong. Blue is for babies, christenings and celebration. Blue is for wedding garters and silly escapades. Blue is for the helpless. The weak. The powerless. All I get is wimpy blue, pastel blue? Christ, I desperately need something hard, harsh, painful, even punishing, to uncap the pressurized expectations I've brought with me.

It's all wrong!

Damn! It's a demonic trick, fucking with me in space and time—everything looks "normal." Can't be! I curse inwardly, Fucking pastel blue! Gut scream, "Fucking pastel blue!" Then boom, "God, I'm gonna be managed to death!" Just like they managed the fucking war! I rave wildly. "Numbers! 8867147—I'm a fucking number!"

As if driven by ritual obligation I rotate and face each wall: North, South, East, West. Ceremonially, a minute here, a minute there, I kick and kick and kick against each pastel wall until my right leg really hurts. Wobbly, lurching, I open my fly and start to ritually pee. Zip out my cock and piss a stream here, a spray there, marking out territory, setting stinky warnings to intruders.

A little nuts. Okay, man, this is a little nuts. Spent, I flop down on the bare mattress; suffocate my face with the naked pillow. I need not to be here. I need to be blacked-out by darkness, not be pastel, just for a few quick seconds.

I drift into a leaden doze.

Act II begins: _The Feast_. The grate slides open, rattling a bit. The edge of a steel cafeteria tray gleams at me, flashing a lippy smile in the late afternoon's soft light. I get up and pull it in quickly. It's a jailhouse reflex. At County the guards would toy with guys. "C'mon, c'mon, I can't wait forever!" There were nights I went to bed hungry. Damn, I'm hungry right now. But tray in hand, I'm again immobilized, once again on Pause. This time more than stunned—dumbfounded—by what's on this tray: a humongous, bloody T-bone steak, overlapping a wreath of potatoes, corn, bread and butter, broccoli, jelly, a couple pieces of carrots and celery. Christ almighty!

"Want coffee, milk or Kool-aid?" coos the guard.

Too much! Something snaps. "Fuck you, motherfucker!" accentuated with a digital gesture.

Immediately after that pleasantry the grate quickly screeches shut, and instantly after that I smash the tray against the back wall. Step over, pick it back up, turn and slash at each wall with its steel edge. That done, I grab a spoon and begin randomly but quite feverishly banging on the tray. Blonk! Bing! Thwack! Thonk! Nothing harmonious, yet slowly increasing in energy as I hum louder and louder and the rhythm becomes manic. Then, abruptly full stop. I drop the tray on the floor. Clank! Start to strip and tear my clothes. Fumble at buttons, rip, whip off shirt and pants, BVD's and socks until I'm birthday naked once again,

Something inside me does not want me to accept anything, wants to Resist! everything. I spurn the bed, opt to lie on the floor, tongue taste its coldness, its harshness. My body craves deep pain, searches out whatever sensory punishment is possible. I grind my shoulder into the concrete floor, toss and moan. "Three hundred days indulgence are yours, my son, for suffering these most sacred pains. Suffer with the Crucified One! Save yourself from the pains of hell."

I strike blood, bruise bone, and idiotically challenge all the minions of Divine Savagery to take me on. Attack! Fight me with the monastic terrors I know oh so well! I am wildly desperate to escape Pastel Blue. Scarred, scratched, bruised, knuckles swollen from ramrodding the walls...spit and piss and globs of slop all around, I roll about smearing it all over my body. So adorned, so marked and tattooed, I collapse into exhaustion.

Heart pounding, no breath left, I hug the floor, wishing it could defy gravity and push up against me, crush me to death. This yearning unfilled, I hurl myself back up, assume the starting stance from long-ago basketball training camps and begin furiously doing knee-to-chest pumps. Faster, faster! Now jumping jacks. Faster, faster! Push-ups. Harder, harder! The spectators cheer; the cheerleaders are agape. Everyone's deliriously yelling, "Faster! Harder! Harder! Faster!"

These frenzied words of incantation last unmarked minutes until I implode into a heap of parts in the middle of Sandstone, FCI's Segregation Unit. Little did I know that outside the cell the Corridor Captain was eye-balling me. He had a front-row seat to my whack-job performance. Without complaint, I spent the night snoring on the floor, bed unmade; only gobs of rejected dinner slumbering upon it.

Days idle by. Soon it's Friday of my first full week in Seg. I've just eaten another pastel blue breakfast. I haven't showered or brushed my teeth all week. Don't ask! My hair's uncombed and before my coffee's gone I'm jumped and overcome by an ambushing funk. I try to shake it. Get up and go over to the window, reach as high as I can, lace a fist of fingers through the steel screen holes and pull myself up to look out at the sky. Fuck, it's beautiful! Then slowly, ever so slowly but steadily, inexorably, heaven's clouds swirl and twirl down forming a gigantic blue lid crushing a solitary pincher bug, squuuuissshhh!

Dead. I'm dead to yet another day. I drop down and fall back to bed—curl up, blankets wrapped around pillows wrapped around my dreams.

An hour later I'm groggily awakened by the duty hack banging on the door with something—a gun? Pushing paranoia behind me, I hear him shout through the slide that I'm to be "interviewed" around 10:30. "It's 8 now"—the guard knows I have no clock. Fuck! Back under the covers, slightly waking again, time unknown, as someone's scratching at the keyhole. This time the cell door swings wide open. Two unfamiliar guards stride in and brusquely command, "Get up! Dress quickly!"

The Adjustment Committee

As I'm half out of bed, one taunts, "You're a demonstrator! You gonna demonstrate?" This macho challenge wakens the sleepy-eyed me. Yeah, I bet you'd love to drag me out of here in fetal position! While ignoring the jibe, which is repeated three times, I button my shirt and walk casually towards the stairwell, lips tightly mum but a lot of body attitude! Downstairs, another guard motions me towards an open door off to his left.

As I'm entering the room I notice the nameplate: Adjustment Committee. Stepping inside, I find four men already seated. No one rises to greet me. Three are civilians, the other is the Corridor Captain. As I sit down one of the civilians states, in stentorian voice: "We know you're here for your political activities. We want to set you straight at initial entry. Sandstone is a good place. You'll like it here. The men here are not troublemakers. Anyone who makes trouble will get transferred—to some—trust me—hard-time place like Marion or Leavenworth. There are plenty of things to do while you're in here, and you can put your time to good use, if—if you use your brain. There's no reason you should get into trouble, if you pull your own time."

A second civilian instantly picks up: "We don't like agitators. We won't put up with any funny stuff. This is a fine prison. The food's better than at any other Institution. We're quite proud of how things are going."

The conversation—Is it scripted?—is maintained solely by these two. They take chorusing parts as in a rehearsed performance. The Captain and the other civilian remain quiet.

I, too, tacitly listen to them repeat, at least four times, what a good place Sandstone is, how much it offers, and that they hope I'll put my time to good use. Something however isn't settling just right. So I break-in, "Do you want to know what I think?"

At that, both officials abruptly terminate their duet. It is so sudden that I realize that this is precisely what they want.

"Just what do you intend to do?"

"I have some preconceived notions as to what prisons are, but basically I'm open to the experience."

This simple remark catches them short. They look at me with fidgety eyes, waiting for more.

"Okay?" I nod.

"Don't be a wiseass with us, sonny," the Captain barks. "We know your background. You can play chameleon with us but rattlers can't change the pitch of their rattles."

Then the last civilian breaks his silence. "There's no room for political speeches in here. This isn't a place for soapbox oratory."

"Hey, man," I stand up, "I'm not in here to organize."

This reflex gesture of standing is straightaway defined, as only prison can define even the simple act of standing, as hostile and aggressive, and one escort guard steps quickly and positions both his hands on my shoulders, a slight downward pressure clearly indicating his wishes. Again, in reflex, I sit back down, unaware that by so doing I've just defused the situation. I continue with a steady tone. "Unless...unless there are civil rights being violated. If you do that, then I can't tell how I'll react."

The room stills and quiets. All four captors shift, rub hands, scratch notes, pull and tug at ears, chins, ruffle hair. Then the first civilian, who I later learn is the Associate Warden, warns, "I should tell you we have many FBI reports about you. We know everything about your kind."

I mirthfully wonder what "kind" I am. As if responding to my mental question, the Captain straightforwardly tells me: "You're a bad soul. It's that simple. You and your friends—the Berrigans, the Milwaukee 14, Mulligan and the Chicago 15, Beaver 55—you think we don't know everything?" He waits to see how I react. Unexpectedly, this Adjustment back-and-forth is not unlike being "spiritually directed" by the monastery Master. I know not to flinch.

Then the Assistant Warden picks-up again, "I'm a Catholic. I consider myself a devoted son of the Church. I want you to know from the start that I have a special interest in you. You're truly a bad actor." Castigating, nasty: "You've been called and you deserted your call. You desecrated the words of Jesus and the teachings of the Church."

Following that, the Captain half-stands, crouches across the table, comes within half-a-palm of my nose, successfully effecting an intimacy of communication—private eyes.

"I know...I know about the Underground. I know about how you helped deserters get into Canada. I know about the stolen draft cards and stamps you carried to Toronto." An affected pause, "Believe me, I know about your visions." He screws up his eyes. "Know this. I've even read what you've written and I know," as he backs away, stands ramrod straight up, full height for emphasis, "more than any others in this room—I would say more than any others in the System—what you've done. How you've done it. Who you've done it with and why. I know how you think and how you dream!"

Towering, the Captain is one impressive figure; monumental—clearly a posturing jock. Here now with moral power pulling from within his words, he is Michael the Archangel become flesh. It's obvious that the Captain is a master at conducting these Adjustment Committee first meetings. He knows when to go for the kill, but I did not anticipate his dagger-in-the-heart: "I'm a former Jesuit myself." Almost whispered; hissed.

Back in my cell I flit and slink back under blankets and pillow. Scream at the top of my lungs, muffled, mocking, "I know how you dream!" Pulling a blanket tighter over and around my head, I rail back at the Captain, "Fucking-A, fucking Jebbie or not, you don't know how I dream!"

I blank out and slip to into a narcotic sleep, dreamless.

When they finally assessed me sufficiently adjusted I was sent to the Admission and Orientation dorm where I waited for a permanent dorm assignment so that I could assume my proper role as a subhuman. So after two weeks in pastel blue Segregation, I was released to the Population.

My body was no longer mine!

Once Inside it took a bit of calendar time before their Adjustment took hold; they were patient. At first I did handle being Inside a bit like my first days in the monastery. I readily accepted my digital moniker much like I had my monastic investiture name, Friar Otto, O.F.M., Conv. It was only a numerical silliness, so I told myself, and it didn't really make me feel much differently. Fairly nonplussed, I looked at the other prisoners with a somewhat detached, almost academic eye. For awhile I enjoyed regular weekly, quite chatty visits from family and friends. But...somewhere around ninety-days in, something inexplicable happened: I became fully Adjusted. To wit, I became one of them—a subhuman. This was not an intellectual shift—not the result of some radical analysis. It was not just an emotional shift—not simply that I got depressed or bummed out. It was of an order of magnitude I didn't even know existed, a shift at once cosmic, personal, even genetic. What was happening? I can only give you an unsettling answer: My body was no longer mine!

I was suddenly present to myself in a way only other inmates could grasp. Simply, I was no longer alive as only human. Much as the Adjustment Committee intended, I slipped down an experiential rung and met my Shadow self. Prison effectively re-embodied me as a subhuman. I became a subordinated, subjected, dispossessed, expendable, disposable, invisible entity. As they intended, in the eyes of the wardens and guards, "Francis X. Kroncke" was no longer physically present, replaced by 8867-147. Here was my first robust subhuman sense: one of disembodiment—they looked at me and saw only 8867-147. I was solely a numbered inventory of the State. As they intended, the initiatory Admission ritual made ''francisxkroncke'' disappear and a stinky piece of societal feces float into the inmate population. Like a streetwalker, my body was no longer mine. It belonged to my pimp: The Man. Now I was forever twice-bodied: Francis/ 8867-147, never to be cleaved. Symptomatically, I urged people not to visit, restricting such moments to family members; just about stopped writing to everyone. I became a slave, doing time, serving The Man.

As I became a subhuman I went way deep Inside into the darkest recesses of the Shadow realm where I ceased to experience myself as an individual, as a person with an identity, as a creature of time. The crucial insight here is that I underwent a qualitative physical transformation as I became a subhuman, as I lost my sense of what it meant to be human. I no longer knew who I was as who I was was being embodied as a subhuman.

Being twice-bodied and treated by others as a subhuman meant having no privacy in any aspect. In prison's Shadow realm there is no space provided where you can experience your humanity in any normal sense of the term. There is no place to go for a nanosecond of solitude—the johns are doorless, every tick-and-tock you are watched, you live exposed like a lidless eyeball. What may be incommunicable is the devastating impact of living within an utter absence of privacy—of never being left alone, of always being part of the Population. I even slept in dorms with up to seventy others—group snore, belch and fart. It was this absolute loss of privacy—awake and asleep—that became the tipping point of my mutation into becoming a subhuman.

Five times around the clock I robotically responded to the command, "Lock up and count!" Twice more while asleep. The duty Hacks go on inventory runs: body counts; asshole numerations. They scan my blanketed body and check my digits at 3 a.m.—ex a box, "Check 8867-147." All they want is my subhuman body, and since it is not a body I have ever known before I simply—ignorant naïf!—give them this body. Like a whore I surrender my subhuman self, let them do with me whatever they want: use me, abuse me, dispose of me. Slavishly I accept being a subhuman. I exist, as all slaves do, with my former one-body self displaced somewhere, out in some cosmic security locker, or something weird like that, as I slip into my twice-bodied subhumanity.

Horrified, I could not find a way to be present to others as a human being. I looked into the mirror and only saw what others saw: 8867-147, a subhuman. One condemned to forever exist as an alien other—a twice-bodied presence. I became what prison so effectively creates: a slave of the State. My body was being slowly but surely sensately rewired. As a slave's body my every physical act expressed my acceptance of domination. When ordered to strip and be searched, I complied. Emotionally, I lost my middle-class sense of shame. My sense of personal honor. My dignity. Servile, I bent over and spread my buttock cheeks. My presence clearly conveyed that now I was _The Man's bitch_.

Now, one-bodied reader, _Awake!_ Subhumans sense the world just as humans do but always with a de-humanizing twist. Man, I don't know if I can get you to make this leap, not so much in understanding as in feeling. In prison a kiss is a betrayal, always. Only bitches get kissed! A simple touch, just a fingertip or a caress of a chin, is a prelude to rape, ala sodomy. Eyes gaze upon you searching for points of entry, signs of weakness, ever ready to watch you disappear (get whacked). Smells are not for pleasuring rather what is sniffed is the aroma of your cowardice, the scent of your trembling terror as you kneel in submission and penile worship, and the allure of the fright that oozes from your sweat as you walk the Yard, hyper-vigilant like hunted prey. Taste always rides upon sexual release: the breakfast donut is nipped at and mouthed letting you know that you'll like his cock. All eating is sexualized—the mess hall but a group orgy in symbolic dance. What you hear is always a variation of the basic equation of Inside survival: Why shouldn't I waste the punk? The punk being you—laughter rising from the poker round—hearing yourself wagered, your life tossed in as ante. So don't make the mistake of thinking that subhumans do not feel. (Hmm. Are you wondering why I want you to tap into your subhuman feelings? Ha.)

The Man's bitch!

As a subhuman I began to grasp the horror of what it means to be a female in patriarchal society—Bitch! Most prison stories are fundamentally wrong. Prison, it's alleged, is a male stronghold where the most macho and violent males are corralled and beaten into discipline by other super-males flexing the glistening muscles of steel death, brandishing the symbols of a potent sexual power. On some days it looks like that but the appearance is quite illusionary.

One situation that illustrates how the biblical becomes translated into the secular is the dynamic of the Adam and Eve story in respect to her and me as Captives. With purpose and systematically, prison was transforming me into a female—the idealized woman of the patriarchal culture: submissive Eve. Here is a mythic She, a female who derives her meaning only and fully from her Man—who accepts being a derivative of his rib. Like her I too became "bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh" as created from The Man. I am his chattel and wear the clothing of khaki anonymity—which he finds fetching. He jealously protects me, constantly watches me in the daylight and in the night darkness of my time serving him. Ever courteous, he opens doors for me his helpless and hapless mate who patiently waits, keyless, cooing for my Man to unlock the knobless doors. I wait. I wait. I wait. He has a lock on the key to my heart.

Majestically, it is his power, the fearsome force of his authoritative Inside power that makes me bend over and part my buttock cheeks. Silently scream: C'mon, it can't be, we're both guys! I, at any moment, am his: night, morning, afternoon delight. At any place: I am walking the hall and he commands, "Open your mouth!" He probes my ears, I rake my hair, shake out each shoe...and bend over. Oomph! It's quickly over, the backdoor bangs shut. So simple. So routine. I am The Man's bitch.

Captive Story and Captor Story

I chose to go to prison. I consciously committed a crime that I intended to admit publicly to gain legitimacy as an anti-war speaker and activist. Once other cons figured that out they would look at me and howl laughing. "Man, who in their right fucking mind would choose to go to prison?" It was clear that going to prison was an option for me since I was a white, middle-class male, but not so for ninety-nine plus percent of the other inmates.

In light of my choice, two stories were being written, basically simultaneously. Being Inside was forcing me to discern and own a story I never thought I had—my Captor story. Curiously, this story became clearer to me as I was discerning my Captive story as a subhuman. This is a very significant point. Unlike most inmates for whom going to prison was part of their social expectations (of the underclass) and so were always aware of the Captor and Captive stories, I had never thought of myself as a Captor.

_Frank, the Captor!_ I'm sure I was not the only one who entered prison ignorant of what "reality" truly was, that is, that I was entering Inside into the Shadow realm. But that's what the Adjustment Committee wanted to assess—my grasp of this reality. Was I like the Mafia guys who already knew what was up? Was this Kroncke guy a dyed in the wool radical, a committed Marxist revolutionary? Possibly they had heard the outlandish claim voiced by the federal prosecutor at my arraignment that I was "part of an international Catholic conspiracy led by the Berrigan Fathers and funded by Castro"? Or was I a namby-pamby nonviolent pacifist who was scared of his own shadow? That's more than likely why they placed me in solitary. They wanted to see if I was truly an idealistic innocent or a shrewd operator. In looking back I can see that my being there threw them for a loop. They looked at me and saw a Captor like themselves. Like other Resisters I was, in the main, racially their kin, spoke like them, etc. One of the Minnesota 8's families actually owned a summer cabin in Sandstone. Lordy! We weren't just from the same social class, we were neighbors.

So the Adjusters faced an uncommon and daunting challenge, that is, how to turn a Captor into a Captive. For them dealing with me and other war resisters was a bit of an historic first. Add to that, their professional training more than likely never had a chapter on "Adjusting the Captor Class." So even more than what they wanted to Adjust in the regular cons, they desperately wanted to assess my state of mind. They had to figure out how to get inside this outlaw's theological mind and soul so they could break me. I wonder now about what they did discuss after the Corridor Captain told them about my antics in pastel-blue Segregation? I'm sure it helped them finally discern that I was simply a harmless fool; more naïve than they were inclined to believe at first. Someone who didn't have a clue about what lay in store while on the Inside.

_Frank, the Captive!_ For several hours the Committee adjusted me. They gave me both the overview as to how things worked Inside and a practical guide for daily living; even gave me a work assignment. They made clear the role I was to play—I was slave, captive, convict, a prisoner of war. I was no longer citizen, son, theologian, nonviolent activist. I had fought their government and lost. I was their Captive. Accept your fate! Bow down your neck! It was now mine to shuffle along, not wail against my shackles and chains, and if I did protest, no buts about it, I'd be beaten into submission. However, more than just being the State's Captive I was positioned as an enemy of their God. (A statement repeated later by the Chaplain.) I was at war with everything they valued, that is, I was striking at the foundation of not only American government but by doing so also at that pillar of Western civilization, the Judaeo-Christian biblical tradition. Without conscious intent, the Committee was teaching me how the Shadow realm operated. In effect they laid the seed for my growing awareness of me as subhuman: the Other, Public Enemy, "gook."

It was critical for the Adjusters that they reorder my vision and understanding of prison reality. In prison's Shadow realm, time, space, the air, others, "now," feelings...are no longer autobiographical. Here is what keys the transition from the Sunlight down into the Shadow realm, namely, "I" as a subhuman have no personal identity rather I exist impersonally through my subhuman group identity as inmate, convict, outlaw, dogshit—8867-147. In the most black and white terms I am Captive of the Captors. Stop and catch the tectonic shift here. "Captive" is the only label the Captor needs—as all inmates are one and the same. This is a metaphysical re-organization, at the level that philosophers call ontological—in the realm of Being. Get this: As I transited from captive to Captive, as I accepted living as a subhuman—Note this well!—I began to experience myself alive on the grand mythic scale. Now, I as Cain, Judas, the Evil One—a hellish denizen of the Shadow realm. Here I also started to grasp fleeting insights into the truly mythic story that my trial played out as the judge affirmed me as a secular Shadow creature, a —"strike(r) at the foundation of government"—a traitor in the camp of Benedict Arnold.

Motherfuckers! I now slowly began to see that I had been living as a subhuman in a certain part of the Shadow realm all the time I was shouting Resist! Dig it, man, what the judge and government feared was my Shadow power, that of nonviolence. What? Truly, I was resisting their concept and image of what a "real man" was. In a curious way my nonviolence was not a negation of violence but an innovative, practical, and effective way of channeling violence, of transforming violence into peacemaking. This was the truth I revealed that they would not and did not accept. It was what the judge refused to let the jurors hear and why I had to be declared "irrelevant and immaterial." But this insight made scrambled eggs out of my mind and heart. On the Outside I knew how to act nonviolently, but Inside? This was not a question I could or ever did answer while Inside. There it became less of a question, actually was never voiced, as I became a totally different person, that is, subhuman 8867-147. The fact is I was being reformed by the Inside's dark powers. I could not afford to lollygag and intellectually look back on my Outside years as I had to keep my eyeballs peeled as I advanced warily forward one Inside step at a time.

The Committee counseled me as to how a good subhuman acts: "Do your own time." I was to submissively "serve time" and mark the cycle of moons and suns with prison's "Lock-up and Count!" routine—not by clock hours or days of the week. While I doubt if any of the four Adjusters were conscious of their Shadow role as Captor, they knew what had to be done to maintain order on the Inside—break me down and have me accept myself as a subhuman.

As Captors I'm sure that the Adjusters were highly confident that the secular discipline of the penitentiary—"doing time"—would, as it had done to so many, inevitably transform me, actually transubstantiate me, that is, re-embody me as a subhuman Captive. For them the weird and scary world that the Inside was would without fail crush my spirit and have me scurrying back to the Catholic Chaplain swearing that once paroled I'd go straight...Forever! More than that, they knew that I had to be re-embodied and made to accept and possess my subhuman self so that I, willingly or not, eventually—inevitably and inexorably in their minds—would step down the rungs to where they wanted me to stay, eternally: "where everything human is soon absent."

Odd as this all may seem, I gained my initial insight into myself as Captor at the moment I accepted being a Captive. Soon thereafter I began to realize that I was—What the fuck?—the Captor of my Captive self. This realization became the experiential basis for my initially sensing my twice-bodiedness. Unexpectedly, it was this insight into my Captor self that shocked me most. I was somewhat prepared to become an inmate and anticipated that being a captive was going to fuck me up a bit. I thought that my previous monastic experiences would help me adjust to another all male, highly structured institution where the daily discipline was unquestioning obedience to all rules. However, I had never thought of myself as a Captor, needless to say not as Captor of my own Captive self. Truly weird.

Baffled, immobilized, downright confused: I am Captor of myself as Captive. Honestly, at the time I couldn't handle the psychic bedlam this insight unleashed. My survival instincts kicked in and within a short period of time I "adjusted" and slipped into the Shadow realm where I walked in lock-step with all the other cons and survived by being a one-bodied prisoner resigned to "do my time" and hope for an early release.

Rung #1

The Mafia and Me

An East Coast Mafia guy, who was taking a fall for a boss, walked with me several times trying to recruit me. He knew about and valued my intellectual and organizing talents but more he knew how reality worked. He schooled me, in his own way, as to the world of the Inside and the Shadow realm. I must admit that I was a bit like Columbus thinking that he was in China only to learn that the world was quite physically different than he had been taught and everyone he personally knew believed it to be. I'll admit that I was tempted to explore his offer. We were talking before the dramatic shift caused by the release of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal took hold. These two events eventually caused a 180 degree shift in the popular attitude about the Vietnam War (most then calling for the troops to come home) and war Resisters (if the war was going to end, why keep them locked up?). So, realize that at the time I was still looking at five long years and felt the sting of what he was saying, mainly that my academic career was on the rocks and my relationship to the Catholic Church in the shitter. I'm not going to feign morality superiority because in truth I was simply too wiped out and still reeling from the "irrelevant and immaterial" episode so I just said maybe.

Using the Mafia as an example of outlaws who move easily between the human and subhuman dimensions—in and out of Shadow and Sunlight—might help you accept that there is another fully operational subhuman world existing right next to yours. But don't be misled. The Mafia is just one denizen of the Shadow realm, and not the most scary.

Most people know the Mafia as a nebulous international organization, a global enterprise—"Organized Crime." As "organized" it maintains a legendary structured hierarchy with corporate memory and history. It's organizational chart mirrors that of a standard corporation, however the executive and management titles differ—bosses, consigliere, soldiers, families, gangs, et al. In short, the Mafia is part of an underground "shadow economy" that basically moves products that are illegal and/or stolen and/or exploited. On its own terms, the Mafia has a corporate mission statement and code of ethics, even a code of social conduct (acts of deference, titles, etc.). More, it has you as a paying customer: "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." In contrast, "unorganized" criminals wandered aimlessly committing random acts of senseless violence. Theirs is an absolutely amoral world.

From Hollywood most people know that the Mafia has ceremonial rituals. An initiate is confirmed as a "made man." The movie The Godfather was probably as close to a documentary on the Mafia as most will see. In terms of influence on world affairs the Mafia's reach remains incredibly extensive. I was shocked to hear, back then, that this extended into the Vatican and just about every government in the world. While the Mafia is usually associated with Italians, today there are no ethnic limitations to the franchise. Mafia more aptly describes a lifestyle, a value system, and a way of doing business.

You might think it an insult that I describe the Mafia as primarily a subhuman organization, but don't. You'll be missing the critical point, namely, that being subhuman is, in some sectors of the Shadow realm, a lifestyle grounded in a social structure and culture. The Mafia recruiter scoffed at my initial inability to see how close to my Sunlight world his Shadow realm was. I did relate that as a kid in Bayonne, New Jersey I remembered being told that "The Wops run the numbers racket." He laughed, "I was just twelve. My first job." He ran numbers on the streets at the same age that I was delivering the Bayonne Times door to door. Predictably, I kept responding with my one-body values arguing that living as a subhuman was not worthwhile. He laid it out clearly, "What do you want?" Then said, "You can have everything. Money, women, fame, revenge—what makes Francis X. tick?"

Since he had lived his whole life as a subhuman in the Shadow realm, as twice-bodied he moved fluidly between the world of humans and subhumans. In effect he told me that I had to let the scales fall from my eyes and wake up to the concrete reality of the Shadow realm, get a grip on who I was as a subhuman, and realize that I was never going to be allowed to bask in the Sunlight ever again. "Francis X., you're a fucking criminal. Look around. Don't those guards have guns? Don't you get it? Capeesh?"

I mention this Mafia episode because I think that most one-bodied folk recognize that the Mafia exists and that there is a criminal underworld. However, in many ways it is not a useful example. For all its Shadowy doings the Mafia's place is just inside the Shadow realm, located quite near to where it abuts the Sunlight realm. They are criminals and considered bad people but their lifestyle is not hard to grasp. They basically cheat, lie, steal, intimidate, and on bad days knock off some "competitors" or "accounts receivable" deadbeats. If you're honest, there were times (right after watching Goodfellas?) that you probably thought that you could see yourself joining them, "If certain things had been different." At the least you realized that "there but for the grace of God go I." After all Mafia guys are mainly businessmen who are just a bit more into the Shadow realm than you are comfortable with...but maybe not that uncomfortable, yes?

Jesus freak

"There's one in A and O." He was saying his prayers, bible clutched. Why the fuck does the Warden keeps thinking I'm the messiah I just don't know; but I go. Fair haired. Blue eyed. Could he be even twenty? I'm just assuming that he hasn't been raped, not yet. "Jesus loves everyone. I can't kill." Aw shit! A fucking-A Jesus Freak. Just what we need here. But why should I give a damn? His fucking Jesus stuff drives the war machine. Chaplains in the field dealing out male body parts as divine food, strengthening the mad ass killers to be even more mad ass; divinely inspired. Why not feed him back to his own? "My wife's at home with our ten month old." Do I need to hear this fucking drivel? I hope someone's reaming his wife. I can hear her moan. I wish I was reaming his wife. Probably seventeen, small town sweetheart, damn, I miss fucking pussy. Okay. Get a grip. "I'm gonna get you into dorm D. Just listen"—Will this asshole listen?—"Just listen to me. Get this right. You're a "CO" in here. That's us. War resisters. You'll be protected." He looks at me so oddly that I know he's going to be hung in the meat locker. "I love Jesus," fades into my ears and rummages around as I try to sleep; swat at it like a fly buzzing. Fucking-A, man, Jesus can't save you once you're here!

Gangs

I had to take a crap, real fast. Fuck off!—These guys lack words, just the eyes say it all, cruelty eyes. I took off to another dorm, relief! I just presume they'll clean up the blood, dispose of that earlobe somewhere, have the Hacks come over and haul his sorry ass off to the infirmary. Gangs! Lucky for me they could give a rat's ass about what I know. They peg me as a lily-livered white-boy scared out of his gourd, willing to suck cock to avoid pain. The other guy: lots of scars, matching his many tattoos. That's what I find out: he had one too many tattoos, from some other gang. All said, their medicine man was one hell of a surgeon; just skinned him, didn't nick bone or muscle. Earlobe specialist. Damn, gotta admire the talent.

Russell

Russell was a con man. Not just a crook but a top talent—Broadway theater class performer. He was a Great Pretender, a real class act. I think he was more amused with me than really interested. He was crippling smart but not astute enough to know when he was stupid. So, every now and then, it seemed about every seven years, he falls and does some time. Imitated airline pilots, inventors, professors but he liked most to do a general, a real two or three star type, go in and fuck up some military operation. "Up in Grand Forks, I had those guys on red alert." Christ, it was a nuclear silo! "How the hell did you pull that off?" He smiled a patented Cheshire Cat smile. Yeah, yeah, I was getting it; he was the Mad Hatter. Maybe he's not so unlike me, maybe that's what he likes, we were reckless, fucking stupid innocents charging at the Dragon or better Quixote at the windmill. Anyway we were having a good time. Ya know, like on the Outside. Coffee and chatting. Suddenly: "Don't move asshole or we'll pound the fucking shit out of you!" Quite hostile, but nothing too out of line. The Hacks have undying faith in the effectiveness of sounding tough; really doesn't work. Three motherfuckers: If I had a gun I'd pop them like moving ducks in a sideshow gunnery booth. Win a prize if I nailed all three! "Let's go." They grab Russell, not inviting him to stand, these jerks never heeding Ann Landers' sweet advice, and so up he goes, flies away, Bye bye, Russell, never to be seen or heard from again. Someone said, "He pissed the Warden off with that piece in the inmate newsletter." Newsletter got cancelled. Just another day Inside. Guys come, guys go; living or dead; dead or alive. _Bye, bye Russell!_

Crocker

There was not a thing to like about Crocker. Physically a runt, wizened, with hair that grew in tufts on top his head, across his face, pimples, beady eyes, fuck, I can't find words to fit his ugliness. To boot he was a world class asshole. Projectiles kept launching from his missing teeth that served as bomb-bays for spittle and shrapnel sprays of food tidbits whenever he was eating or laughing, although more often he was cursing up a storm and sprinkling all about with incendiary words: fuckin' niggers and fuckin' injuns and fuckin' fags was his trinity of choice. Truly a piece of human shit. I mean if they had an out-of-box-failure that could be returned for a replacement, I'd lick the stamps myself. Yeah holy moly altar boy me, because he was fucking talking me to death. Yadda, yadda, he had a trap that never shut. Just my luck getting tagged by the Chaplain to tug my little Sermon on the Mount heart over and befriend this fuck-up. Crocker made me violate one of my own religious absolutes and wish that his mother had aborted.

He spoke such poor drop-out English that I could never imitate him properly. At times this was a relief because I wasn't sure that I always wanted to know what he was ranting about. But the little fucker was so far down the Shadow rabbit hole that maybe he came out the other side and I really missed my chance to kiss the son of God's ass. I don't know. Just listen.

"He came in every morning and woke me up by fondling my dick. I kinda liked it. He'd get me stirring and then he'd kiss my dinger all over and lick me till I was wide awake. Most times he played with himself but now and then I'd blow him. I thought that all daddies were like him."

"Foster poppa Jack, now's here's a fucking real man. The old fart would come home drunk and beat me, no matter what, no matter why. I was round ten and such a small shit that I could squeeze behind something heavy like his dresser and he couldn't reach me. Look here, these three slash scars. He got to me....Yeah, still waiting to fuck up the ole coot."

"Ha. Ha. When my balls were bursting I'd mess with my little sisters, not really sisters, I'm no pervert, we're all foster trash. I knew some had been getting the rod for years. I liked it when they fought back—I'd slap 'em around. Eat me, bitch! Goddam I luv those whiney leetle whores."

"Think, I'm no dope. Got my GED in juvie, my seventh, errr, maybe eighth time down. Started lifting weights but fucking queers kept wanting to feel my muscles. I ain't no queer, man. Had to do that now and then, ya know how it goes, just no queer. Don't think me no queer!"

"Why did you steal? I mean again. Doesn't doing time frighten you?"

"Nuttin' scare me."

Crocker was on a roll, talking about this theft and that heist, about getting burned by other thugs, and brushed off the getting "scared straight" stuff like it was lint. "It's good in here." That came out of nowhere. "Good?" He got real steady, somewhat calm, like about to give a little speech. I almost thought he was organizing his thoughts, but I doubted that. "Learned me how to do it in 'ere." I was not sure of his reference point. He blew out a big wad of spit and of course sprayed my shirt and pants a bit; dew drops. "Har, har. Ya don't know how to do it, do ya?" We didn't talk after that—he actually shut his trap and just well, fuck, just smirked, I guess.

"Crocker's turning down the last dime on a quarter for weapons possession." A guard tells me that. He knows more, but wasn't letting on. I had to ask a trustee who knew everything, took a pack of cigs to satisfy my curiosity. "Poison." Just the one word and he thought it enough, but hey, I'm a fucking dumbass Inside virgin. He dangles some more: "Can't catch him. No one can. Smart little fucker, if I don't say so meself." My eyes tell him I'm still stupid. "Yar one of those COs, right?" I nod. "Like nonviolence, do yar?" I nod again. "Hee, hee, he's one of yars!" I'm totally not getting it. "Look man," and I stop, slip him another pack, "what did he do?"

The trustee takes his coffee mug and runs a finger around its edge. "The kiss of death." That's all he says. Okay. I'm getting nowhere. Later when I rap it down around the mess hall table another guy mockingly wags his head and snickers. I'm getting real pissed: "Goddam it, what the fuck's up, man? What the fuck?" Jasper holds up his coffee cup just like the trustee had. "The Foster Home Serial Killer. You really didn't know?" I frown, scrunch up my cheeks. Someone have mercy on me! "Kroncke, sometimes you can't see the motherfucking forest for the cocksucking trees. That's his Inside rep. That little shit probably poisoned a hundred foster parents. He's an Avenger. Clever. Smarter than smart. Not sure if this is true, some guy who did a nickel in max with him testified—I mean he swore on his mother's grave—that Crocker's an A-fucking genius, some kind of mystical chemist. Could be bullshit. But you just gotta dig it, man, just dig it!"

Denying the Shadow realm

When I was in jail waiting for the Federal Marshal to drive me to Sandstone, I had no way of knowing that getting into prison would become the easiest part of my journey. I had no way of grasping either intellectually or emotionally that it was a One-way-in-No-way-out entrance into the dark, shadowy sector of the human mind and heart. It took me awhile to realize that, as when in the draft board, I was once again in a mythic zone—a place where the primal and primary stories of origin and cultural values are acted out daily.

What is near impossible for a one-bodied non-prisoner to emotionally grasp is how each of us reenacts deep cultural stories of Shadow and Sunlight through our daily, personal and intimate actions. However such becomes crystal clear and heartfelt when you experience yourself as twice-bodied in the Shadow realm as a subhuman. Pause a moment. Reflect a bit deeper on this central question: What could it possibly mean to be subhuman? Just consider the word "subhuman," what does it conjure up for you? What images come to mind? What feelings are aroused? Have you ever treated someone subhumanly? Been so treated? Are you open to considering that when answering these questions or examining the images and feelings that arise that you reenact deep cultural Shadow and Sunlight stories every day? If you are, then you will begin to see how the biblical story of Genesis—Western culture's dominant story of human origin—conditions how you answer the foregoing questions and determine how you imagine and feel when responding.

As noted, one of the communication barriers that I continue to encounter when discussing prison with Western and biblical people is that the culturally dominant Sunlight story of origin in Genesis is one that implicitly denies that there is any value to Shadow stories. More, that Shadow realm experiences are worthless, should be shunned, and if possible the Shadow realm obliterated. Even if you are an avowed atheist or secularist, can you sense how the Genesis stories frame the questions that you doubt or deny, such as, Does God exist? In answering, Why are humans here? and What defines human nature? the story of Adam and Eve's "Fall" is usually referenced to defend the claim that humans are inherently depraved—constantly violent, endlessly warring, and self-destructive. Inside—as I describe more fully in Chapter 7—inmate conversations frequently cite Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve, the curse of Ham, and other biblical references when talking about the Big Issues such as Good and Evil, violence and nonviolence, justice and revenge. (As a philosopher/ theologian I can state unequivocally that the most vigorous, impassioned, and outrageous discussions about life take place Inside on a daily basis!)

In this vein, in Genesis, the Shadow, Evil, the Serpent, etc., are acknowledged but they do not possess godly or divine powers. Rather there is only one God and He is Good. He lives solely in the Sunlight realm of "heaven." In line with this, Shadow stories are tales of your weaknesses, sins, crimes, craziness, in general the flaws in your human psyche and soul. But of absolutely critical note about this tradition is that you can be brought out of the Shadow realm, forever. You cannot only be forgiven but saved, rescued—you can escape Hell and eternally live with God in Heaven. This story is completed through the Christian interpretation of humankind's fall from grace and rescue by a messiah—of Adam's sin and Jesus' redemptive act on the cross.

I found this biblical language aptly translated into the nonreligious (secular) myth where the Hero slays the Dragon—he does not seek to tame it and make it his house pet, that is, part of his personal life. His is a conquest and vanquishment. As I read Western culture, secular values retain this belittlement of the Shadow realm. This is a critical insight to which I will return later, mainly on Pathway #3, as I apply Outlaw Visions to an understanding of America and how it has dealt with its Shadow subhumans, namely, enslaved black and indigenous Native peoples.

Also, look at my trial as another example of this communication barrier. The judge's ruling that I was "irrelevant and immaterial" reflected his inability to hear and value a Shadow story. His actions stated that the Sunlight story, e.g., America in Vietnam as "Saving the world for Democracy" had no Shadow chapters. Again, it wasn't that he listened and through the jury heard and judged my Shadow story of Resistance to Illegitimate Authority, rather the telling point is that he couldn't let the jurors hear it because to do so would be to admit that America has a Shadow identity and story.

This is the only way I can understand why the judge acted as he did, especially after allowing me an eight day trial and thirteen witnesses. Do you sense the underlying Shadowy disturbance that permeated my trial? Can you sense the dissonance, uneasiness, noisiness, and general air of bafflement, even sinister intentions that were possibly afoot? We went from: "You can present a Defense of Necessity" to "I approve your witness list" to "Frank, you can proceed to closing argument" to "Everything which was said here for the last eight days is irrelevant and immaterial" to, finally, "You strike at the foundation of government itself!" to "Five years in a federal penitentiary." All in all things simply didn't add up.

Where was the judge when inside his head he (I assume) said, "I'll let him talk for eight days then I'm going to tell the jury that he's a madman"? All I can conclude is that in truth I was the living embodiment of a Shadow story, e.g., as Gordy, the Marine grunt, told it, "It wasn't a gook, it was a person." This is the Shadow story that I (honestly, not back then fully aware about) embodied as I stood before judge and jury. I was arguing that war was simply an act of familial suicide. I was challenging war's mythic claim that it led to peace or brought justice or healed a nation. I was challenging the lie behind the war policy of a People, that is, that the enemy is Other, alien and that to kill a gook is a moral good and a culturally praise-worthy heroic act. I said that this was a lie and that the truth is that there are no enemies, just family members, so killing another human is an act of species suicide.

But to a People and a nation where war is a market commodity of an industry (the military-industrial-academic complex), my Shadow story was bad PR at the least and betrayal at worst. I sincerely believe that the judge heard both stories: Sunlight and Shadow. Even that my Shadow story is one he wanted to hear for personal reasons (which of course I will never truly know). So he let me proceed with my testimony while all along being fully knowledgeable that he should not and so consequently would not let the jurors (the People) hear my Shadow story as he enacted his mythic role of Sunlight judge in rendering me "irrelevant and immaterial."

Likewise in prison the official story was solely a Sunlight story—"Do your own time" and you will be rescued, saved, and once again sent Outside—"Free!" The way for any inmate to make this story his own and obtain an early parole was for him to completely reject his Shadow story. I heard clearly that what I thought was my Sunlight story (altar boy, monk, peace activist, theologian, etc.) was actually a Shadow story and as such I was counseled to abandon it, reject it, denounce it, and so submit to re-formation. Despite my anchoring my Resistance in a life-time's dedication to the Catholic Church and Jesus Christ, it wasn't a story that held any truths or values that the prison counselors (including the Chaplain) wanted to or knew how to work with. Prison was not a place of transformation or forgiveness or reconciliation, rather it was a place of punishment, deprivation, humiliation and condemnation.

Prison's directive seemed to be that I was to experience my subhumanness not so that I could value it and integrate it so that I'd become more fully human, rather I was to be "scared straight" so that I'd get a taste of being subhuman and then—based on this Captor logic—spit out my venomous past and submit to prison's adjustments and corrections. The sign of prison's effectiveness was to be my total capitulation to living only through the culture's Sunlight story. It intentionally (by policy and procedure) thrust me deep into the Shadow realm and would have stranded me there forever (caught in a cycle of recidivism) unless I submitted and surrendered and allow myself to be rescued. An actual Faustian Bargain was set before me: Either remain a subhuman forever or submit to being rescued by pledging never again to enter my Shadow realm. I was to forever forget, regret and denounce my Shadow story (which I had thought was my Sunlight story!). For most ex-cons such pledges were normally linked to commitments to enter rehab, therapy or move to "somewhere where no one knows your name." For me, I would have become a Sunlight star if I had repented, pledged my allegiance once more to Church and State, Judge and Archbishop, and spent the rest of my life denouncing nonviolence, pacifism, civil disobedience, and such heretical notions as the One Family of all humankind.

Rung #2

Sr. Celeste

Sister Agnes Celeste had mentored me, so my assistance during ceremonial preparations for Mass was prized. She was a stickler for details. The words mistake or oversight or "Sorry!" were not in her vocabulary. From her no absolution, no second chances. There was the Celeste Way, no other. I mastered the one and only way to fold and unfold an alb. Likewise, holding the cincture just so that Father could do a simple twirl and be bound. Stoles were hung wrinkleless as were chasubles, with all other accoutrements of priestly primp and preen set in their proper places. If a Monsignor was to officiate: his biretta and proper trim colors. A bishop—now there was a clothes horse if ever I met one!—with miter and rings, pectoral crosses and skull caps, his distinctive crosier—Shepherd's staff—plus His Excellency-only special editions of Scripture, gilded and bejeweled; it went on. Artful dressing and then the mastery of protocol. I was at first too young to know about Broadway theater but later did not doubt for a moment when someone whispered that the holy Sister had been in "showbiz"—the word uttered with an odor of un-sanctity tinged with an air of envious tittering.

"Shoes off!" I obey. Glossy blacks. Visiting room pretty.

"Shirts off!" I obey. Khaki standard and undershirt tee.

"Pants off!" I obey. Belt unsnapped, gravity assures a graceful fall. I bend to my ankles, remove one leg, then the other, just toss my pants to the side.

"All!" I had already obeyed. Not tardy. Not shy. There are no second chances, I hear Sister's echoing dictum.

"Lift!" I obey. Two fingers spread in a vee. Left hand pulls my fleshy penile self to salute as my other fingers toggle my balls. Scrotum cleared! did not have to be shouted.

"Mouth!" I obey. Two fingers, one from each hand, grapple the edges and pull wide. Open wide! is only said in dental offices, here it is more than wide—"cavernous" approaches the inspector's intent—making sure that no contraband is being smuggled out, no murderous blades wrapped like metallic braces around teeth, no telltale string that connects to something hideous hanging down my esophagus.

"Hair!" I obey. Fingertips like bomb detectors scanning my skull, back and forth, up and down, messing my hair is not the concern. Without mention, ear lobes are pulled exposing the smaller coves of smuggler's delight.

"Bend!" I obey. Pivot 180 degrees. Slight spreading of legs. Bow at half-waist. Ready!

"Spread!" I obey. A handful of each buttock cheek. A slight, delicate, somewhat demur exposure, revealing the treasure he has come this day to claim as his own. Ah, truly my pleasure is beyond magnificent. I am his! I am beheld as only he can behold me. I am known as only he can know me, in the full biblical meaning of the word!

Sssshhhh! Putt! Putt! Putt! Whooooshh! In unison the war resisters Resist!

"Goddam hippie motherfuckers! Perverts!" red-faced, banging his baton against the radiator, full-bodied bucking back and forth like a chained bull...anger, humiliation. Kill the gook bastards!

We start dressing, slowly: convict protocol. He's the one cornered now; can't leave us unguarded. "Hey, Anderson, what do you tell your wife each night about these little love fests?"

As soon as he can the Hack unlocks the door, steps out into the Visiting Room: stands rigid and authoritative, a sentry eyeballing everyone, targeting someone to fuck over. Without a doubt, Anderson will exact his revenge by fucking-over someone's momma or kid.

We enter the room: Bitches strutting our stuff!

Slap da Bitch!

First coffee break. Sitting with four guys, all non-COs or dopers, being entertained by a story of daring-do and "Slap da Bitch!" These java-raps are a script that any hard-core Hollywood screenwriter would die for. What most film hacks yearn to create with their imagination, these guys spit out in between smokes. The horror, though, is that these fellows do what the others only half-erectly fantasize. When the trigger is pulled, these boys are the finger. They laughingly lick blood from their moustaches.

#1: "Fuck the bitch!" and all the "Roll 'em over and groove the tube!" ringside cheers scramble through his mind as she comes atop. He wants to grab her by the throat (maybe her titties) and yank her down. "Ouch, that hurts! Stop! Stop!" But he doesn't stop. He throws her, slams her hard onto her back and slaps her, slaps her like every bitch needs slapping when they want to ride high and play The Man, slaps her and spits, "BITCH!"—conveying in that one exhaust of breath the ageless condemnation, the exhalation of Yahweh's expulsion from the Garden: "BITCH!" Oh, the word fits so well, draws the cheeks into gullies of bitterness, a word which spittle easily accompanies, for what are they but to be spit upon, beaten and rammed with the rod? "Spare the rod and spoil the child!"

#2: "Man, I'se finds me parole officer humping me squeeze, I mean, boat buck nak'it 'n gittin it on in me apartmant. Now, Man, dat's bold ef ever I don't say so's ..."

He enacts the smart whip of his gun right up to the victim's nose.

"... so's I'se takes tis guy's badge 'n I pins 'is dick to 'is trowsars, Jeeeesus of Christ, don'ts he yells 'n hollars! ... Tells me he's gonna bust me far the forever ... 'n my bitch she's gits so far-fucking rowtated by my punchin' this lettle puke away, she curls 'round mes leg 'n start moanin' far me, so's ..."

He artfully pauses for a swipe of the black juice because he knows he's on a roll.

"Eenspired!" Continues: "... so's I grabs 'er by da chin—lek this," he motions, showing his gentle cuddling of her face with his free hand, "'ns I kneels 'er down gitting' 'er hot fer me cock 'n ten, "BAAAP!" I knocks 'er out wid me knee!" He slaps his left knee, the instrument of deliverance, and the others in chorus slap at their chairs and bonk! and thunk! their cups: acts of kudos. The moral of the story is quickly run out, "Dat's shews tat bitch 'n eeny bitch taw fuck wid me!... I'm Da Man!"

It was like preaching to the converted. They went ecstatic participating in the act of symbolic sacrifice of "Slap That Bitch!" They re-re-live, truly resuscitate themselves as they seize a moment of transcendental relief through his bold actions.

#3: "Man," another chimes in, "I once wasted a bitch once for ev'n thinking 'bout doing thet!" More laughter and rattling cups.

#4: As it escalates, "Yeh, Man, led me tell ya, et's beter ef yuv cuts 'em up, den dey can't do et wid nobudy, nevar agin. Deys 'ave ta beg fer et!"

The air thickens, What else beside blood and cunt? Every con has his own humping fantasies. But the jive isn't over yet. The first speaker has waited to end the break with a thrilling flourish.

#1 (again): "Tens I walks out. Bud I gits a bright un up 'ear," he taps his left temple, "Bad Dude, gives 'er whats she wants. Be's Meester Nice Guy! So's I goes back en, she's as conked as a mudderfuckin' rock 'n I flips 'er butt-beauty ups tha bed, rips ..." and he demonstrates his strength by tearing her imaginary panties as he would a simple piece of paper, "rips er panties 'n fucks 'er ass so's hard tats I cums five times ... Man, I'se swear—by me Mudder's Kiss—maybes sex times!"

They laugh and slap and howl and curse; cups rattle and eyes bulge in awe and amazement.

Shadow truth: Of the small pleasures of life, one's cruelties, when drawn on a broad canvas, seem to evoke a bonding between so many.

Whistle blows: Hack batons bang randomly on walls, radiators, doorframes, rounding up the herd: "Break time's over! Move it! Lock up and count!"

Mafia Sal

Mafia Sal was a reliable font of knowledge. "Jones" he nods towards the guy just crossing our path, "he's untouchable." Wow, that resolved the stupid ass discussion we COs were having. Like, can you believe it, you run out of topics to discuss while Inside? No joke. This Jones, or whatever his name might really be, was a wise-ass, loud-talking, "nigger, spick, dago, injun" cursing guy who when he stood up during the weekly movie and told whoever was mouthing off to shut the fuck up, Christ, they did. In my mind I first thought he was suicidal. That he was a fucking screwball whose nuts would be lying in the sink next morning. "He has his own cell." Not so much a big deal until I learned that he was down for just a nickel. There were few single cells in the Stone and the rule was that you had to have done a dime already just to get on the waiting list—no one ever wants to sleep in the dorms. But here was Jones, the stupidest motherfucker in the whole joint. Sassing guards. Ragging on inmates. Cursing and swearing and...hell, he was all of five foot ten standing on his toes, wire rimmed glasses, crew cut, and a fucking wimp: pimples were bigger than his muscles.

Mafia Sal: "He did a job for the warden."

No. No. No.nonononono!

"You're just screwing with my mind, right, man?"

Smirks as he toys with me: "Stregner's been the warden's groom for a long time. He's seen the tongue."

Was this a story I wanted to hear? And if hearing it what was I supposed to do with it? Did I want to know that Jones's nickname was "Butcher"? "He just doesn't kill his deer. He skins them. Guts them. Dries out and makes treasured items." I guess I just looked too dumbfuck altar boy or whatnot: "I told him, when you're out I got a cock I'd like to hang in my den."

Sal!

Jared

Captor of Captive Self: Another resister who did protest and organize while Inside got sent on The Ride, a continuous moving from jail to prison to jail through several states. That way no one knew where he was. This was the pre-computer age, and there were no cell phones in the cars or anywhere. His story stayed with me for a long time as a perplexing tale until I found myself as my own Captor. Jared is the convict. Steve is the Hack; an FBI agent. They're in the Marion federal penitentiary, Illinois; a maximum lock-up.

***

Within fifteen minutes, Agent Witson has set the stage, dragged his transfer package—radical revolutionary Jared Jennings—through "Costume and Make-up" where he has him put on a Hack's uniform! (What the motherfuck now?) Dressed, Witson signals Control to roll back the gate to Cell Block D on B Wing. Without a mirror, Jared can't gauge how the audience sees him. He still feels like the hobbling convict, chained and linked from hands to feet, a transfer shuffling behind his Keeper. Yet something inside shouts, Do it!... and so he does.

What Jared doesn't see is himself as Hack—as that image of ambulatory authority, instant executioner, existential judge and jury. More astounding, he's an icon. The uniform draws out the savagery of his Celtic and Teutonic genes. It's a cloth of transformation. Steve notes, Great! He looks . . . a nip of jealousy, envy, a touch of a lack of self-worth cuts the sentence short.

Jared: Tall, broad-shoulder muscular, with a left cheek that bears a telling battle slash scar. Armed to the teeth: pistol, cuffs, blackjack, and "the bat," that cross between a baton and whip, the bastard son of modern chemistry, a plastic composition which, in creative hands, can bludgeon or whip— "plastic steel."

What follows is Marion Penitentiary as a Disney attraction, "Prisonland." Steve tows Jared and barks like a tour guide. Jared is amused, disconnected in a way, sort of observing himself from above, floating, not really in his body. Through the Inside magic of the moment Jared is securely tethered. Steve's the slave master bringing his Northern abolitionist cousin onto the plantation. It's all attraction/repulsion, approach/avoidance but, at the bottom, a pure validation of cruelty. Jared doesn't revolt. He is now a god of cruelty.

"Hey, nigger boy, Old Tom there, quit playing with yourself and get over here," Steve commands a barely awake elderly black convict. He's rattling, clanging the bars with his bat. The old man walks over, not cursing, not hurling obscenities, just quietly; he places his hands on the bars.

Yasser."

"How long you been in here, Tom?"

"Twenty-five, sir."

"Have you learned anything, Tom?"

"Yasser."

"Tell me, old nigger."

"I'se learned not to mess with The Man."

This the old con says with steady fire, with a peculiar dignity. It's as if the sentence sums up his caginess, all his street smarts. Conveys why he's alive and still pulling time. But more, it's a statement of his history, his grounding in his own story, a connection to his people, time and—although it escapes Jared at this moment—his God.

Steve stretches his right hand through the bars and pats the old man on the head. Not with the vigor that one tousles a boy's hair but with the same intent.

"Good, Tom, you can go back, now."

"Yasser."

Without comment or question, the two move along. Steve picks up the pace, quickening, as if sensing his quarry.

"Are you two fag breaths licking each other's assholes again?" Steve fearlessly presses his face between the steel bars as he raucously laughs at two overly-tattooed guys. Jared notes they're adorned with Hell's Angels and White Power symbols and slogans. The two inmates bound over to him, a kiss away from his face. "Ya la'tel shetface, puke ass cocksucka, ya ain't man 'nuf tu open thes cage en fight me lake a man!"

It's clear that they've met before. "Your schlong must be ten feet tall by now, cranking it like you do. Here," and Steve makes as if pulling something from his shirt pocket, "here's some pussy perfume. Go bang the toilet, fag breath."

Why the inmates don't rip Steve's eyes out is beyond Jared. Who is Steve? What's his real story? Unspoken, these are not questions to break the spell. Performance over, Steve is now several steps ahead of Jared. Behind him, all Jared hears is horse laughter. He doesn't look back. He's jogging to catch up. If he had looked, he'd have seen a con, arm hanging out the cell, pumping a finger of fuck you! as the scene closer.

Steve and Jared quickly pass through several cell block gates and arrive at what is obviously Segregation. Here there are true torture holes. Solitary isolation:7/24/365. It's near pitch dark, and many uncountable ethereal creatures are present. The smell of the site—phew!—weakens Jared. His knees quiver imperceptibly, like when he walked in procession into the cemetery shouldering Dad's coffin.

"This one's yours," Steve says as if they've been keeping score and Jared's been complaining about not enough times at the plate.

"What?"

Instead of answering, Steve firmly shoves him inside a cell. Jared's facing a wall of darkness. For a suspended moment he just stands there—"hung out" as the lingo goes. Vulnerable.

Suddenly he is vigorously and harshly shoved backwards, body-slamming Steve who's standing right behind him against the doorframe, as a threatening voice snarls, "Ya muthafuckers stay outta my face!" It's a voice that could kill—its tone has a shiv's slicing edge. Again, Steve shoves Jared forward and this time, somewhat adjusted to the dank darkness, he staggers to a standstill in front of a large black youth. The guy's not as tall as him but wider, sculpted like a Nubian Adonis. His bare sweaty chest glistens as if he'd just been doing push-ups. _A keg of rage!_

The con swings at Jared, batting down his raised left arm. The force of the blow pitches Jared off-balance. He awkwardly hops and half-jumps a step backwards. He fires a bewildered glance at Steve who's leaning against the cell grate, at rest in an observer's pose, arms folded, almost like a professor—only lacking a smoking pipe!

"Hey, man, cool it, shit, I'm friendly..." But the guy knows all types of cop talk and takes this bullshit jive as a trap. He jumps Jared, moves expertly with gang trained battle skills, locks his neck, a death choke. Stunned, not prepared in the least for this—not thinking that this is what Steve meant by "Being a Hack for a day, take a trip to my side!"

Before Jared even taps into his fear he feels his windpipe being crushed, can't draw in any air, claws at the guy's hands, wrists, desperately trying to loosen the grip as everything abruptly turns dark and fuzzy...overpowered, freaked, fearing death...conks out.

"Aw, Christ Almighty!" Jared doesn't hear as Steve comes to the rescue. He flies from the guy's blind side and with a few expertly placed karate chops lays him out. The guy's sprawled out, ass up on the floor, partly on top of Jared.

In a vale of semi-consciousness, Jared starts writhing, gasping for air. He's smothered by a weight of blackness, deafened by screaming shooting stars of silver pain and red-hot blood comets, and drowning in black sweat. Steve hefts and heaves the inmate with his right foot, rolls him off Jared. Then, without even asking if Jared's okay he glowers and chastises, "Are you totally insane?" Sternly, before the question's fully heard, Steve answers himself, "Good God, you're a fool!"

For several minutes, the scene is a diorama. No one moves. Then, as if the final bell has rung—9...10!—Jared catapults up, heaved by some alien force. He's standing tall and pumping his chest with rage. Without intent, he stands menacingly over Steve, the Short.

"You're the fool! You walked me into this blind. What the motherfuck did you think I was going to do? Shit. Walk in here and beat the crap out of him?"

"He's black."

"What the fuck?"

"Can't figure it out?" Steve abruptly turns and starts to whack the back of the unconscious youth with his bat.

Jared forcefully grabs Steve's baton, lifts and heaves him away from the body.

Steve taunts, "Do it! Show me you have some balls!"

Although more than a bit bewildered and off his mark, Jared intentionally flicks a symbolic bat whack at Steve. Unexpectedly, it snaps the tip of his nose, blood flies, a soft crush! and several whimpers and Agent Witson crumples into unconsciousness.

Steve's slumped body—a heap of powerlessness.

At the ready, sir! A fiery match? A kick to the head? Perhaps a blow to the groin?

"Little brother's revenge": a story about Jared, the third son. His scrawny body he's worked so hard to build up—willed it to grow tall and taller! A hundred push-ups, a hundred pull-ups, a hundred sit-ups, a five-mile run every day, every week, every year—his own boot camp regimen. Jared enters the novitiate. Every evening dragging himself, kneecaps scraping every inch around the perimeter of the chapel: thirteen Stations of the Cross. Scourging. Tears of blood. Hammer and nails torturing out the weakness.

Jared hears the mythic invitation. Every male seed hears it: Revenge is redemption! Be a man, son. Don't cry! Yes! Jared feels in his clenched biceps the urging of all who have done it. "In His Name!" "God wills it!" All who have sought validation through this one redemptive act, hidden in the abode of the powerless, here, within the cloaca of the penitentiary.

Who'll know? It's not an FBI trap. No one's filming this escapade. He's obscured by Seg's intestinal darkness. Who would be the wiser? Who would come forth to testify?

From out of the Hole—truly the sphincter of life—Jared excretes the black youth, not in body but in soul. Hack talk: You're just a piece of shit! He whacks him again and again. Strike, blow, lash, whop, smite! There's a pleasure registering on a scale measuring historical pain. Jared becomes giddy at the thud! thump! crack! jolt of the body. Rise up, my son, for today you are a man! Profound moral and physical release and relief spurts from him as he watches the whites of his victim's black eyes roll around, deliriously. Jared is dead! Long live King Jared!

The gods of cruelty are well pleased.

Groaning awake, Steve is half up, grasps his knee; blood crawls from his nose. Jared picks him up, literally hoists him with both of his hands, clawing his chest, and brings him lip to lip. "You're just a piece of shit," he says dismissively as if intoning the Mass's "Ite missa est!"

Jared places Steve, carefully and gently, just outside the door of the Hole, sets him there as calmly as if taking out Thursday's trash. As he turns and shuts the cell door, he pauses a second—Flash!—Jared instantly flips back and his role as Hack is soon forgotten.

Tears flood Jared's eyes, tears boil with rage and fury at Steve's brutal beating of this helpless black guy. Why did Steve beat that guy senseless? Jared raises his hand in blessing, strokes the air with a sign of the Cross, whispers a kind, loving, priestly, "God help you, my son!"

Hacks!

Do you how motherfucking stupid Hacks are? Assholes. They think they are in control. Let me tell you they are just toilet paper wiping the asses of cons. At any moment any guard is a corpse. They live only because the cons let them live. If you don't grasp this truth, then you'll never understand what living on the Inside is all about. See, inmates serve time to fake out and fend off the Hacks and other righteous Guardians of Society. See, it's a bit like college. Inmates accept their time Inside because it distracts Society-at-large from facing the real problems of crime. As long as some of the outlaws are doing time, the delusion among the Captors persists. They think that they are in control. But, tell me, what battle in the War on Drugs have the allegedly self-described Good Guys won? Ha. Nada. Nothing. Why? Because it is the outlaws who control society, not the self-deluded Good Guys. You might not get this, but you better begin to believe it. Bad Guys get the Good Guys to run all types of wars off of which they make lots of dough and exercise incredible power over Americans...stupid motherfuckers. Do you know how motherfucking stupid you are? Really? Every professional title and academic degree you add to your name only piles on layers of stupidity. Call yourself a CEO or a General or a President...ha, you're just an asshole cocksucker jacking off some Organized Crime operative. Wake up, America! Wake up, the fucking world. The criminals are in charge. Outlaws rule!

Shadow Mothers

While Inside, and long after, I found such primal emotional experiences as Captor and Captor near impossible to describe to one-bodies. Like many who have deep Shadow experiences, I only found emotional solace, and some intellectual grounding, with other ex-cons. So what was the emotional tipping point that flipped me over from being a mute on his Dark Night's journey to writing about prison?

During 1983 a question nagged me, "Why didn't you off your motherfucking sorry ass while in prison?" The question was not an intellectual one, rather it pointed to the emotional upheaval I had experienced in prison. My twice-bodied self was screaming this question at my one-body self. I didn't have an answer at hand. In the subhuman realm little value is placed on a life, even one's own. Captor me cried, "Die, motherfucker!" Captive me howled, "Let me die!" But I survived. Why? How? What can I say? It took me ten years to find words to describe this moment.

Major insight: For me the answer came in a properly mythic moment in that the emotion I felt which conveyed the answer was the most primal of all: "Mother!" I was stunned, a full tens year later, to finally consciously become aware of the emotion that had sustained me while Inside, that is, a mothering presence, here, of a Shadow Mother, the Mother of subhumans.

But don't get misty and sentimental on me! This Shadow Mother was a cold-hearted bitch and I hated her. Why? She did not comfort or nurture me rather She simply held me, kept me from offing myself. She accepted me as Her Captive son and kept me from committing suicide while watching me suffer. Because of Her I survived. If I had not met Her and grounded myself in a more traditional primal emotion—here the dreadful fear and self-loathing of my biblical myth—I would have killed myself. Although my Captive and Captor selves fumed and raged over Her presence, one loving Her, the other not, what I learned from this encounter was that you cannot live without a grounding primal emotion, either of Shadow or Sunlight. Without anchoring in such a primal emotion you simply float away into some form of death—the living death of addiction or actual self-murder.

It was She whom I met when I was "where everything human is soon absent." These are Rung #3 stories. The significance of finding Her is that Her presence corrected a monumental error transmitted for over five thousand years by the biblical tradition, that is, that we humans have no mythic Mother—that we are "motherless children." This was the insight that became the bridge that led me out of the Shadow realm into the Sunlight vision of Pathway #3. More, this experience of Her presence enabled me to understand why I acted as I did while in the "absent" sector of the Shadow realm, as related in Rung #3 stories.

Traditionally, Westerner's consider themselves a Father God, patriarchal society. Absolutely wrong! This is the major error transmitted down the ages, notably by theologians. It took me several more decades but, as explored below from Chapter 6 onward, my Outlaw Visions developed a twice-bodied methodology for interpreting mythic stories, such as Genesis. Much to my great astonishment, when I went back to Genesis with my twice-bodied senses, I found my Inside Shadow Mother present in the story. Awake! Our Western tradition is one of Family. Of a Divine Couple, here, a Shadow Father and a Shadow Mother. We humans have a Mother and a Father...we are a family!

Here, however, I want to stress that as I descended deeper into the Shadow realm to where "absent" defined the scene, I was not consciously aware that I was embodying myself as a presence of dreadful fear and hatred—one so deep that it expressed itself most tangibly through my fear of my own self. Francis X. Kroncke dreadfully feared 8867-147. 8867-147 dreadfully feared Francis X. Kroncke.

**Rung #3** —"where everything human is soon absent"

In the "absent" sector there is no individuality. Everyone is Other, and so each other. Each and all share an intimacy of darkness, abandonment, and betrayal. It is the Shadow sector where the personal can only be expressed through a mythic story or storyline. (Additional Rung #3 stories are in Appendix A.)

Cigarettes

For a package of cigarettes you obtain entrance into the darker sectors. Who cares if flesh is sold as long as pleasure is secured? What is living but the gush of the primal stream of hunger that tears at anything consumable? So it is "her" ready for you after lights out. Draped blankets provide a wink of dignity for your savagery, and it is your howling lust that is now your mistress. Does it really matter if she is willing or not? Just suppose it to be a battlefield and she our winsome captive, the whore of the enemy, what else is to be done? Does it really, truly matter if it is an asshole or a pussy tightly sucking you with fear as enticement? Her eyes are sweet, as doe-like as any you can remember, and her skin so soft, more soft than you can remember. "I can give you head better than any woman" was the come on in the shower stall. Now it is all on and come. The bed rocks, my hard cock rips and saws, I spit and smack her, lift her behind and pound her intent upon breaking her bones, she is mine, bought, sold, no holds barred. I pound her again, aware of the extra charge for blood, I grab her hair and pull her head backwards, she whimpers, artful is she, I freak out into a bludgeoning rage, egged on by those waiting in line, whacking fucking creaming; she lies still like death. The blood costs me another pack.

"Kill?"

Ask me again. Go on. Did I really kill someone? Not just someone, Matthews the fucking Hack. I know his name. I taste his name as I bite my tongue and swallow blood. He's just one of those "I was following orders" type of cruel sons-of-bitches. I mean he was nice. He'd sit and talk with a guy. I even saw him read a con's letter once; another fucking illiterate. That's just it, I mean, I'm sure he explains it all to his wife. How he cares for the cons. How he hopes they leave and never return. How he holds them in his prayers each night. Fuck! I learned how to turn a fork into a small pitchfork; tines sharp as glass. Yeah, I didn't flinch. When the moment came I walked right up, staring him straight in the eyes, and plunged that shiv right into his "I love you Daddy!" fucking heart. Why not? Wasn't my crusade to root out evil? And what better way to fight evil than with evil? I mean, do you really want me to value the Hack as a person and the Captive as a piece of shit? Bet your polka dot drawers you do. You're a fucking asshole. I bet you'd fit right into his shoes, go around acting like you're Jesus the Christ or whatnot, so in love with your own fucking evil that you call yourself a "Just man!" Asshole. It was me who was just following orders: Yahweh thundering, "Guard Eden's gate. Kill them if they try to return." Fucking-A, man, my sword is all aflame!

VN rape

We dragged all the women into a hut. Not bad cunt. But only the young ones. After twenty they all go to pot; stink. Some little boys. Who cares? A cock sucking mouth is a cock sucking mouth. I tell you, uppers really help. Hee, hee. Did you ever put heroin on your dick? Dig it, man, you can fuck all night. This bitch was deep-throating me forever and I pounded more sweet ass than I can remember. What? Sure. It's true, man. Sure, sure, it happens. Some guys just can't handle it. The spurting pleasure flips them out, like a live hand grenade they just blow. I've heard about it; never seen it. Cock rockets off and their sperm just explodes, man. Kinda cool, in a way. Dig it! But what's one more corpse in the Nam, man? Body-bags everywhere. You gotta deal with the shit, that's righteous. If it ain't our dicks piled high in the bush then it has to be theirs. But don't dwell on the negatives, man. Take a hit. Best shit in the Stone, man. Listen up: You do what you gotta do, that's truth. Kill them however you can, man. Them are da orders! Hee, hee. Suck on that!

First time

You return from your first ass fuck. You are a normal guy, a regular dude. They watched you power your way on the basketball court. You B-ball fucked the asshole niggers. You were the white god. You took the dark skins on your back and shook them off like a giggle. You laid them out on the ground and looking down you didn't have to say a word, you were The Master, nothing less. Your compadres, anyone who wasn't black, sat in the stands and cheered you on. They laid bets. They didn't care if your cock was 9 inches or 11, they just knew that as you bucked into them, threw them off their nigger ways, well, you were their hero. Whiteman beating the blacks at their game, roundball being the ghetto's rite of passage. No doubt they plotted nightly revenge; wanted someone to stick a shiv into your groin. But you fucked them on and off the court. Big ass howling black bitches, two cartons of cigarettes and they'd sucked your nuts harder than they did their momma's tits. God, the thrill is beyond ecstatic! So what am I to say to proper white society from which I come but "come" motherfucker, suck my cock and live like you've never live before! Ha. Trust me, my cum is magical!

Visitor's room

What was the most horrid cruelty in the deepest sector of the Shadow realm? Sexual violence? Torture? Personal humiliation? Hardly. Visitor's Room: punishing my family. They are not digitized so they expect civility. Once the barred entry gate thudded shut my oldest brother trembled. He was gripped by dreadful fear. My mother who had given birth to nine children was now eye-savaged by the admitting Hack as a scum-bag, bitch, whore! She was ordered: "One hug and kiss when you meet. One when you leave." So when Mom places her hand upon my knee, motherfucking Hack Matthews following orders perfectly, strides over and booms: "Stop it!" She near jumps out of her skin, off the Earth, and bent her neck in obeisance. Mom: slave of the State. Fuck!

I can't bear it! "Everyone please leave," I mutter unintelligibly. (They stay for the whole two hours allotted.)

Families: rattling heartfelt chains as children run around, playing in the pools of psychic blood, disobeying adult calls to behave—"Be good!"—but only quieted by vending machine candy. Con-kids: Living assurance to the Hacks that they have job security, these, their future inmates.

Me, unable to answer the simplest of questions: How are you? How are things going in here? What have you been reading? Have you heard from your cousin Ethel? So it goes. Me, mute; no tongue. Babbling, yes. Arranging vocal sounds one after the other. But all I'm doing is passing time. Why are you here? I want to ask, but I can't even form the question. Francis is no longer here, I want to say. Do you like my number? It's a good cribbage hand: 8867. Ha. But I don't laugh. No one's laughing. No one can hear the sounds of silence.

Hate myself

...hate you

...hate myself

....curse my mother for birthing me

...slit the Old Man's throat, stupid ass motherfucker!

...this is the red button. Push it and the world ends. Click!

...god hath spoken: every child a murderer: push my hand up her cunt and ripped out her tubes. Peace, man!

...slice and dice! Circumcised dicks rule!

...take a hammer to her head or use a gun-butt: old witch's lived too long anyways, one gook's just another gook. I don't care if she is your momma!

... "Bless me fadder for I'se sinned," cumming up his penitential asshole, "Te absolvo!"

...they hung him on a cross, do you really think they put a diaper on him? Nuts hanging down; cock sliced off. Hey, these are phallic warriors; god's dickheads. Dig it, man!

...sell me your leetle children! worms dripping out my mouth. Five dollars for ya sester. A plenary indulgence granted, I intone. Wanna see some ears? My cock's so hard I can't stand up so I toss them over; teak box, inlaid ivory. He sniffs the box's rim, wafting in the odor of fetid rotting flesh. Sign here, Uncle Sam thanks you.

...I am never going to die. The dark never dies. Only the light fades and dies; extinguishes. I am forever. Beyond forever, beyond now, beyond the beyond. Into me all comes and is consumed, extinguished, laid to rest, expires. I am never going to die. I crawl out from between your legs, cock and pussy pad, cry: Wah, wah! Which means, watch out I'm gonna fuck yer mudder and ass whip your daddy. I am never going to die. I love to watch the fire dim and fade away in their sweet eyes. My hands cherish the moment of stopping a breath. I lean over and kiss their lips. Before she's cold I'll fuck her just one more time. Before he's cold, same. Who's gonna stop me? I am never going to die, you fool.

Subhuman 8867-147: Bitch and Fag

What is it like to live everyday twice-bodied as a human/subhuman? How do I sense you, others, and the world at large? Pathway #3 will forward a fuller answer but let me say at this point that I now am present in the world and sense it as a Mother. My subhuman self is the deeply repressed, denied, abused, reviled...Shadow Mother. I am She who does not let my brothers and sisters die even though they are suffering and cry out for death to stop their hearts. She is Bitch and Whore and Slut but Hers is a Dark Mothering, a relentless defender of life. As Her I radically affirm the preciousness of life even in the moments of absolute darkness "where everything human is soon absent."

I am She whom you kiss in betrayal. I am She whom you touch solely to rape. I am She whom you gaze upon, intent upon my death, my obliteration. I am She whom you hunt as prey. I am She whom you shun, from whom you flee, cursing me, "Bitch! Slut!" I am She whom you find impure and whom you curse and condemn to suffering in bearing new life. Yes, She is Shadow but as I embrace Her so do I become a real human person, one whose heart beats humanly and subhumanly. As I manifest Her presence so do I also discern and in tandem manifest myself as Sunlight Mother: the two are dynamically interlinked. I live my days alive as never before...because I live embracing my Sunlight and Shadow selves: I am Mother and Father of all humankind.

_Shadow Father_ : This is my Captor glad story—He is ultimate Hack. In His glad story—played out in the prison sector of the Shadow realm—sexual violence redeems, justifies, sates, and renders the errant soul whole (whole, because sexual violence is often the initiatory rite for prison gang membership). Sodomy is both punishment and reward. There you become the Man's bitch—"Fag!"—as everything that empowers a male is stripped away. I experienced "my body, not myself." I lived in a collective and had no personal space—definitely no intimate space. I had no right to my own body, no control over my private parts. My name—now inmate 8867-147. My property—an unlocked three-by-three cubicle. My power—doors had no knobs and were opened by asking the Man. My privacy—not only doorless crappers but at any moment I was his to command: Bend over, "Spread 'em!" More, I slept with up to seventy men double-bunked. Lights out meant listening to the groaning, bed-spring-creaking "Slap the bitch!" romantic banter of prison's sodomitic darkness.

Score this into your memory-banks: My search for the Goddess in the body of a woman first came to me in the body of a male—myself, as I confronted and embodied my male Shadow as I simultaneously became a fag as I surrendered to the truth that I am the Man's bitch!

Prison broke me, as it does most, and I became a bitch and a fag. I was pushed into the deepest realm of darkness where I felt myself embodied as Other in the most despised of ways. I sensed in my flesh that I was what the dominant culture hated the most and which was mythically denied—a Mother. I realized that without a Mother Goddess women can only be bitches, remaining chained down in the darkest Shadow realm of society and culture. Likewise, without a Mother Goddess, "mothering men" can only be fags in the same Shadow imprisoning realm. I realized at this moment of insight why my nonviolent visions and political actions had been doomed to fail. Simply, I could not publically or spiritually express my mothering masculinity (as nonviolent, as father, as brother lover) since I had no mythic Mother to model and teach me mothering. Only when I embodied myself as bitch and fag was I truly released from prison's darkness and, like the Phoenix, soared like a firebird! Only then did I become a divine Mother...and so a divine Father. Only then did I tap into the power of unconditional love—able to nurture myself and every other child on Earth.

To get you to understand—even if you end up rejecting—my claim here that my subhuman self is me as Shadow Mother and why I embrace myself as Shadow Father and Shadow Mother—Bitch and Fag—I need to take you further along on Pathway #2 into how my Outlaw Visions developed.

Summary

I entered prison with the popular misperceptions which my white-male, middle-class, highly educated world holds. I anticipated that the Adjustment Committee wanted to change my mind, re-educate me, and show me the errors of my way. Hardly. Rather what totally upended my world was their attempt to control my body, to eventually have me discern, identify with, and embrace my subhuman self. Slowly, over time, I adjusted but it was not caused by my intellectual consent, rather it occurred as I slowly descended down the rungs of the Shadow realm to the sector "where everything human is soon absent" and suffered a total personality break-down and transformation. In the "soon absent" sector I became one of them—a subhuman.

The Rung stories present the experiences that were instrumental in my ultimate realization that I had become The Man's Bitch, and that my body was no longer mine. Worse, simultaneously with this insight I also realized something that I would never have even slightly understood before prison, that is, that I had a Captor glad story and that I was Captor of my Captive self.

A decade after prison, as I reflected upon the "soon absent" experiences, the insight that enabled me to start anew was that Western culture and Christianity deny the Shadow. There is no Shadow god or goddess in this mythic tradition. There is no God of Evil, equal to the God of Good. In effect, I realized that I had grown up trying to distance myself from the Shadow, to conquer evil, in brief, to vanquish my own sinful self and in doing so to save the world from the Bad Guys. Now I grasped that it was only when I had embraced and embodied my subhuman self that I began my ascent into the Sunlight and then moved forward towards becoming a "real human person."

When, in the mid-1980s, I had asked, "Why didn't you kill yourself while in prison?"—given that I was at rock-bottom, having lost my Church and Country—I realized that I had embraced my subhumanity and as I did that someone was there in the "absent" sector keeping me alive, preventing me from suicide. I uttered, "Mother!" While this Shadow Mother strove relentlessly to protect my life She did not love me, even care for me. She watched me suffering. For Her that was okay: Bitch!

My Shadow Mother enabled me to discern the truth that—despite the over five thousand year biblical tradition that claimed otherwise—we humans have a mythic Mother. We are not "motherless children." This insight became the bridge that led me out of the Shadow realm into the Sunlight vision of Pathway #3. More, this experience of Her presence enabled me to understand why I acted as I did while in the "absent" sector of the Shadow realm, as related in Rung #3 stories.
Chapter 7: Outlaw visions

What is distinctive about Outlaw Visions?

Outlaw Visions explores and interprets the subhuman realm where the primal emotions of "where everything human is soon absent" experiences are embodied and the Shadow Mother and Shadow Father are manifest.

Outlaw Visions identifies, meditatively melds together, and then interprets two stories, the glad story of the Captor and the sad story of the Captive. When the subhuman and human selves emerge as One, a new body is manifested, that of a real human person.

Outlaw Visions invites you and opens a way for you to experience this embodying revolution.

From this embodying revolution and meditative practice, a vision for dwelling peacefully and comfortably at home on the Living Earth emerges—Pathway #3's "Earthfolk" vision.

Just to be clear about my objective in developing Outlaw Visions: I am twice-bodied, making an effort to return and talk with one-body folk. I feel that it is imperative for everyone to become twice-bodied so that they can become real human persons. I am staking the claim that the Shadow realm is as physically and geographically present and tangible as the Sunlight realm. I have been Inside and I want to enable you to go there through sharing what I experienced, as presented in Chapter 5, especially the Rung stories. Listening to inmate stories became the "oral scriptural texts" which I interpreted as I developed Outlaw Visions.

In the mid to late 1980s, as I embodied my twice-bodied self and exited my Dark Night's journey, the Inside's qualitative transformation that embodied me as a subhuman moved me to question everything I had been previously taught about who we humans are and why and how we were created. Frightfully, I realized that I was facing a challenge of daunting mythic proportions: Who am I? Who are you? What is real—Shadow and Sunlight realms? Inside/Outside? Where was I to go to find answers? Being twice-bodied forced me to question all the answers I had found as a one-body theologian. I was now sensing the world subhumanly—as Bitch and Fag—and none of the mythic stories (biblical and non-biblical) could any longer provide me with a vision or way of living.

I needed a framework to organize my Inside experiences. I realized that my pre-prison identity— _Who am I?_ —evolved based upon a sequence of stories that enabled me to embrace others and the larger world around me. I clarified that sequential development and sought to apply it to my Shadow identity and experiences. Here is how I determined that my pre-prison, one-body identity had formed.

One-bodied identity formation

You can look at my ten year Dark Night as simply a journey to find an answer to, "Who are you?" With the asking "you" wobbling between my being 8867-147 and Francis X. Kroncke. It was during this time, as I struggled to understand how to explain to myself who I was as a subhuman, that I realized that as a one-body I had matured through a fairly common set of identity forming phases which were grounded in specific stories: personal, family, social, cultural, and mythic stories. Prison presented me with the challenge of discerning how I was forming my subhuman identities and in the process composing my subhuman personal, family, social, cultural, and mythic stories.

Notably, the formation of my one-bodied identities included hearing cumulatively interrelated and co-temporal stories about my ever-changing yet ever-stable identity as "FXK." To anticipate, this sequential interrelationship was not how it went with the formation of my subhuman identities. Here's how my one-body identity evolved.

_Personal identity_. We are all born "in the middle of things." By the time you become self-aware, one of the most dynamic, growth-filled and formative periods of your life has already happened. This is the "age of innocence" phase when you are closely held, your every step watched, and during which you are regularly embraced by others. All your experience is intimate. The "Other" is friendly and nurturing. This is when you are most closely parented. You are nurtured physically and, most significantly, emotionally. Before you have concepts and words for them, Others embrace you and feed you from their hearts. You feel safe within an embrace. When you become self-aware, it is at that emotional moment when you intentionally embrace Others and affirm that they are not you. Personal growth happens as you increasingly become aware of Others and so of the you of "you." This you has a special name, here, "Francis."

_Family identity_. The personal you awakens when all of a sudden you realize that not only do you have a name but Others have names. It is at this time that the word "you" draws you into dynamic interplay with Others. This you is a word Others use to help you understand "who you are"—which becomes "me." You begin to name your story's Other players: parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. You practice writing your family name, here, "Kroncke."

You feel safe in your familial home. You also sense that the Other is not you and that Others also have families. While you are warned to be aware and distrustful of strangers, you realize that you live in a neighborhood, which again is usually a secondary safety zone. For me, it was how East Coast Roman Catholics defined their urban sectors—here, "St. Vincent's parish." Soon, you arrive at an acute stage of self-awareness. You enter adolescence.

_Social identity_. As a teen you begin to feel socially awkward, self-conscious, and sensitive to external evaluation. At base you develop two functional identities, a private and a public personality. You come to know Others as different, odd, unusual or like you. The Other is often insensitive to, even oblivious about your special needs and talents, and you seek either isolation from everyone or the comfort of those like you. Your identity here might be heavily influenced by negative movements away from Others, and you sense both the power and protection afforded by group stereotypes, here, on my maternal Irish side as a "Mick" and being Catholic, a "fish-monger." This is the phase wherein you often feel that it is "me against the world!" And even your group against the world. For example, before John F. Kennedy was elected president, I had a definite and clear sense of being a second-class, immigrant "Catholic American." In the main, your sense of social safety is only among those like you. Commonly, you seek to join a pack. In these groups, you clarify your shared and/or separating values. Here, I identified as an athlete (jock) and joined basketball teams, and also as an altar boy, that is, a priest in training as a seminarian (a Holy Joe). This is the phase where you begin to sense that you have an inner life.

Soon, a sense of time enters into your identity and personal story. You realize that millions have lived before you. You learn about your familial past; your ancestry. You become aware of yourself as a distinct player within your own family unit. You also become aware of your family's distinct identity within the local and social community. Without necessarily having the concepts or language, you become aware of your socio-economic, political, religious and sexual identities. This mix of social identities enables you to confidently face all the Others—nearby in the neighborhood and far distant in "the world at large." Of critical and significant note is that you begin to develop a set of social and moral values.

During these phases of initial self-awareness, you begin to form answers to the big questions, and start to carve out your personal story, notably, one that enables you to robustly answer the very personal question, "Who am I?" You start to learn how to tell the first chapter of your own individual story as it explains who you are inside your family. Soon, you learn how to describe other chapters of the big story that anchors your family in the larger social and cultural context. You learn how to tell your big story in respect to the quality of the neighborhood where you live, the characteristics of your ethnic identity, the specifics of your parents' work careers—often with corporate identities and titles, the tradition of your religious affiliation, and even, in certain homes, your political persuasion.

_Cultural identity_. Most often you become aware of your culture as it is defined against another culture that appears radically different, sometimes repulsive, even evil. Here, I was "American" and "Western" and not so loudly spoken, "White." Also, "Catholic" and "biblical." I became aware of the Far East, non-whites ("coloreds"), Protestants and Jews, remotely of pagan Buddhists and Hindus, and definitely, given the Cold War era, the godless Commies. This sense of radical difference sometimes occurs when you study a foreign language or travel abroad. As you become intellectually and politically aware the similarities and differences between cultures becomes evident. You begin to develop your cultural identity that forms your global personality, that is, how you individually and socially fit within the world community. You discover the particulars, even peculiarities, of your personal, familial and social identities. You experience their complementarity, incompatibilities, and distinctiveness. You sense a certain emotional safety inside national boundaries, and for the first time become aware of the grand intellectual tradition of your group. Of note, I was an American but, significantly in my case, a Catholic American with "Catholic" providing the primary cultural stories, that is, biblical mythic stories in the grand Western tradition.

_Mythic identity_. Soon the big questions that address the issues of life and death arise, and it feels urgent to answer them. "Where did we come from? Where are we going? Why are we here? Why are we Americans better than all others?" This type of questioning leads to an examination of those mythic parts of your big story that offer you a vision and language about, for example, eternal truths or your immortal soul. The mother lode for answering these questions is your mythic story of origin. It presents the vision that enables you to emotionally ground yourself in the face of death and other negative events as it also endows you with a sense of your original goodness. Although the biblical mythos (as interpreted by Catholic visions) presented a story of the fall and the sinfulness of humankind, it also contained the hope for redemption and salvation, either through being one of the Chosen People or saved by the Messiah. What is most important to grasp is that these mythic stories provided you with access to your deepest feelings about Others, your family, society, and your culture. Your sense of individual uniqueness was enriched as you experienced yourself as living at the mythic level, dealing with the most critical issues and deepest emotions of your People.

The "Other"

Your understanding of the Other is central to all these identity stories. Each story tells you whether the Other is friendly or not and so sets the ground rules for emotional engagement. When you first meet an Other is when you begin to feel your deepest emotions. These can be good or bad, joyful or fearful—all depends upon the stories you hear. Of critical note is that it is the mythic story which presents the controlling definition of the Other that is then expressed and reconfigured by the other identity stories. Your sense of the Other is not completed until you understand how your mythic story wants you to identify and emotionally engage the Other. For example, to see yourself as specially Chosen and the other as not-Chosen.

Your sense of the Other is seeded in your personal story as you first meet a family member or especially a sibling as Other. There is a closeness to this distance. As you embody your family, social, and cultural story there is less closeness and more distance. You learn that your stories include appropriate behaviors when meeting an Other. For example, you learn social protocols and cultural rituals, such as a firm handshake or a deep bow. However, until you encounter your mythic story's approach to the Other, the other stories provide you with a way to engage an Other. Usually, this is a peaceful approach at best and a civil interaction at least.

Of critical note is that it is with the mythic story that you learn whether you can kill the Other or not. _Consider_ : Social and cultural stories are expressed through ethical and moral actions. There is no society or culture that defines itself as a killing society or culture (not even the Nazis). However, when the mythic story positions you as Good and the Other as Evil (not-Chosen, an infidel, or an untouchable) then you are shown why you can now do what the other stories do not allow you to do, that is, vanquish the Other as Enemy ("gook") to protect the People. The Mobius image is useful here, also. As your walk along the identity story path you begin with the personal and going straight ahead end up in the mythic. Only the mythic story enables you as an individual to transcend the boundaries of the personal, familial, social, and cultural stories. Only the mythic story defines and enables you to locate the Inside dimension so that you can enter it from the Outside dimension, that is, shows you the way into the Shadow and back out into the Sunlight. The mythic story is one of "To hell and back!"

In short, this framework of describing how personal story and identity is linked to mythic story and identity proved critical in my grasping why I had never known about or consciously experienced my subhuman twice-bodiedness before entering prison and going Inside. The prison as Shadow realm was unknown to my family, social, cultural and mythic, so then to my personal story. This was so because my mythic, biblical Catholic story denied that the Shadow was godly or ultimately powerful. As noted, in the biblical account there is no God of Evil equal to the Father. More, in that tradition Satan was described as a mere creature ("Now the serpent was the shrewdest of all the creatures the Lord God had made.") As such there was no absolute evil and what evil did exist—Original and mortal and capital sins—was overcome by the sacrificial and atoning death of the human-divine Jesus as the mythic Christ.

Without my knowing it, my "irrelevant and immaterial" judgment effectively booted me out of my mythic story. I lost both my mythic Catholic and American identities and stories, and so all the other stories crumbled, including my personal story. Then while Inside I was shaken to my core by the primal vision of seeing and experiencing myself as a subhuman. I was experiencing myself ever increasingly descending down the Rungs into "where everything human is soon absent." All this tumult forced me to seek new answers to the mythic big questions because only by doing so would I be able to write a new personal story and discern who "me" was now since I was both human and subhuman: twice-bodied as Francis X. Kroncke/8867-147.

As I reflected on my Dark Night's journey I realized that as one-bodied I only had my Sunlight human story to tell the judge and jury. So I told it fully: about my father, my Church, Teilhard, Gordy, my mother, me as an altar boy, monk and theologian. So when this Sunlight human story was assessed to be irrelevant and immaterial I had no way to process or understand what the judge meant. How could the life of a human be irrelevant and immaterial? Ha. That was the rub—the judge's ruling should have awakened me to the obvious fact that my seemingly Sunlight human story was revealing something forbidden and foreboding, something which had to be stifled, muted, and cast out.

_Awake!_ What I came to realize was that mine was a Shadow story and one that threatened the Judge's mythic story. That mine struck "at the foundation of government"— government both sacred and secular, holy and profane. The judge knew who I was because he regularly met subhumans and frequently cast them into the Shadow realm. He heard my Sunlight story and felt the deep emotion I tapped into, that is, the heretical, blasphemous, and outlawed emotion shared through a heartfelt embrace of the Other as not gook, as not enemy, as not evil but as me, my brother/sister, my family. The judge implicitly told the jurors, Don't listen to this Shadow realm subhuman! because he did not want them to compassionately feel One with me or any Others. He instinctively knew that I was presenting a new mythic story, one that, if heard and then embraced by the jurors, would destroy the foundation of reality as he knew it, and which he as a magistrate of the State was sworn to defend. However back then I did not awaken, I simply couldn't make sense of what he had done. I had no inkling about the Shadow realm and my subhuman self.

In retrospect, my trial judge told me that I had all my stories wrong! I was wrong about every identity I had ever had. My mythic story was wrong—America was a violent military empire not a peacemaker. My biblical story was wrong—"Deus vult!" God wills it! was the crusader's screed of God's Chosen warriors. My social and cultural stories were wrong—America's "Manifest Destiny" and its "errand into the wilderness" were ones of conquest not peaceful co-existence. Or in secular terms, Aristotle ethics and politics, summed up in "We make war that we may live in peace," truly defined the purpose of society. There was no god or society of peacemaking. Nevertheless, it was my personal story that I had to learn was totally wrong. I was not "Francis X. Kroncke"—I was a digitized inventory of the State, "8867-147."As soon as he uttered "irrelevant and immaterial" the judge knew that he was also telling me that my personal story was wrong, that is, he knew that I was no longer Francis X. Kroncke...and that my digital subhuman identity awaited me.

In summary, until being ruled "irrelevant and immaterial" I was the one-bodied human person I described wandering about on Pathway #1—singularly self-identified as being a Roman Catholic theologian. This was the Sunlight me who could not conceive of himself as other than fully human and who expected to be treated with the utmost respect, who self-assuredly laid claim to civil and constitutional rights, and who righteously demanded to be judged morally and justly. Even the trial, sentencing, expulsion from the Church, and the "irrelevant and immaterial" events were still experienced by me as a one-bodied human, as Francis Xavier Kroncke.

Primal emotions

Always remember: The most powerful and significant aspect of mythic stories is that they enable a People and so individuals to experience the deepest, most primal emotions that unite and bind them together. As I was developing my Peacemaking Visions (on Pathway#1) I was teetering on the edge of grasping this point. However when I wrote that essay I was still a bit too one-bodied and begrudgingly surrendering the last vestiges of my American and Catholic identities. In time I came to grasp that mythic stories excite and inspire the big heart of a people—although, notably, it may be an evil as equally a good heart. Mythic stories enable a people to know themselves as One, and individuals to anchor themselves in the emotions that make them feel whole as a fully human individual—a "real human person." Once again, a good example of how individual and mythic identity and story emotionally intermingle is the soldier on the battlefield. As soldier he is transformed and embodied as "America fighting" and no longer experiences himself as an individual at war ("Frank at war!"). Yet it is his individual acts of heroism (told through his personal story) that enable the People to tell the mythic story ("America, Land of the Free, Home of the Brave!") that makes everyone deeply feel safe, secure, righteous, at peace, and so forth.

Using this framework of mythic story and primal emotions, you can now understand why I entered prison on a Dark Night's journey. I had no shred of my Sunlight story left; no personal or mythic glad story to enable me to tap into heartfelt emotions of peacefulness and security. Mother Church had kicked me out. Father State, likewise the boot. I know that, even given your best intentions and efforts, it remains near impossible for you to empathize with me because I doubt if you've lost your personal or mythic story. Hopefully, you can at least sympathize with my situation. I can live with that, for the moment. My objective, however, is to move you beyond sympathy towards empathy and...well, do you realize what I'm trying to do? It's to get you to feel the deepest emotions in your life to date. To feel as you've never felt before—as a subhuman. Sugar aside, I want to fuck you up! Okay, just being honest.

Twice-bodied identity and story formation

In 1983 I began to realize that I was once again going through these identity phases as I attempted to work out my subhuman personal, family, social, cultural, and mythic stories.

Awake! I realized that I not only could not start but that it was impossible to start as I had as a one-body, that is, born within a family. Using the Mobius illustration, like most people I was born into a family and then progressed towards my other identities, ending up with my mythic story and identity. In sharp contrast, I realized that engaging my subhuman self meant working with these stories in a reverse direction. This meant that I had to first form a mythic story about the origins of my subhumanity as my starting point.

How did I come to this realization? The Adjustment Committee enlightened me. Upon entering prison their initiation ritual intended to simultaneously change both my mythic and personal identities and stories. The Adjustment Committee cared little about my family, social, or cultural identities, rather they immediately conducted the "baptismal" digitizing ritual which not only changed my personal identity from Francis to 8867-147 but simultaneously transformed me from citizen to convict—I was re-born as mythic Captive. Of all the actions of the Captor, this digitization unleashed a primal emotion, one that they intended to evoke, namely, of complete and total powerlessness. I felt not only wretched, forlorn, and enslaved but sensed myself ever so slowly but steadily vaporizing towards invisibility as I became humanly unnamed as I became numerically identified: 8867-147.

Possibly the most radical and revolutionary experience and insight was that the mythic experience is embodied in the intimate zone. Again, I had the Adjustment Committee to thank for this insight. They immediately went into my intimate zone, ripped out my name, digitized me, and positioned me as a subhuman Captive whose early parole pivoted on my heeding their counsel, "Do your own time!" I heard them: I bowed my neck, assumed the slave's posture of subordination and submissiveness, and simply sought to survive each day; not live, just survive. Here is why and how I grasped that intimacy is a Shadow realm experience. It was in the intimate zone where I became the Captor of my Captive self. It was in my intimate zone where I experienced myself as mythic Captive first and then as mythic Captor. So to form a new mythic story, I would have to explore my intimate zone to tap into the primal emotions that drove me to capture my own self.

In this light, for me to move forward in creating a Captive mythic identity and story required my discerning and evaluating what were the primal emotions of my Captor's mythic story. In our Western culture this would take me back to an exploration of biblical Genesis and its two stories of origin. But, honestly, I could not figure out how to actually start because during the course of my graduate theological education I had never approached or known anyone to approach Genesis as a subhuman. Yet, no bones about it, this was what I had to do if I wanted to discover a new mythic story in which I would be neither Captor nor Captive, rather meld both and so become a real human person.

In this way, I came to understand why and how the Captor mythic story and identity was composed. That is, it required my surrendering my personal identity as FXK with the simultaneously rise to dominance of my identity as 8867-147. In a manner, the Captor mythic story was simple to grasp. All was black-and-white in a rigidly dualistic world. Simply, I was the bad guy from whom the People needed to be protected. If the Captors could have their way they would lock me up and throw away the key. I sensed that over the prison gate hung the sign, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." They cared little if FXK ever returned to the Sunlight. It was emotionally clear to me that my life was worthless and that my daily task was simply to survive.

So even though I gained insight into their Captor story and my role as Captive I was still faced with the daunting question: How could I create a new mythic story where I was not either human or subhuman but a real human person? From everything I had ever learned about mythic stories, no one individual composed them. They were group stories that usually took shape over a long period of time, often measured in centuries. Yet, one of the main characteristics of mythic stories struck me as possibly indicating a way forward. This was that, in general, mythic stories were first formed as part of an oral tradition.

Mythic rituals

In an oral tradition the mythic story was embodied in the personal experiences of the story-teller who communicated it through a ritualized public performance to a People. As such the communication goal was not so much an accurate transmission of story details as it was the evocation of a range of primal emotions that would bind the individual to the group. Mythic stories were ritually interactive—ones spoken and heard, often sung and chanted, and often expressed through dance and movement. Overtime they formed into official ceremonies with set procedures and protocols.

In a certain way mythic stories formed much like today's "urban legends." That is, they were not so much carriers of factual truths as they were imaginative stories that solved specific critical problems that a People faced. Like urban legends they arose to tell the People what they wanted to hear. For example, if the People wanted to believe that their enemy was barbaric, a legend arose that regaled them with horrific accounts of the enemy's depraved cannibalism. Such legendary "truths" became part of a People's tradition of revelation and were transmitted from generation to generation through ritual ceremonies.

Consider how the first people who heard the Rib story began to sense and then to move among themselves—ritually act. Only two "lone males"—Adam and his god—are in the Garden as the story opens, so how was this heard by men? Didn't they hear "males are special to our God!"? In response how would the hearers have physically interacted with women? Biblical history recounts how women were forbidden to become high priests or enter the Holies of Holies or conduct ceremonies. It appears that the Rib directly impacted how men felt and then ordered their physical relationship to women, basically putting women Inside (their ribcages!). Biblical males felt so strongly about their lone male bond with their Father that they ceremonially transformed their cocks into liturgical totems through circumcision. Thereafter, every time a male touched his intimate parts he was symbolically present to his god. In stark contrast when women's bodies manifested their creative moon goddess fecundity each month, laws of separation required that they be set apart and purified.

How did biblical women react to this lone male movement? In brief, they accepted subordination and became submissive. They rid themselves of customary female centered rituals and practices. They began by not speaking their goddess Mother's name in the story. Eve does not protest that her Mother is absent, rather she accepts the cockamamie revelation that Adam's body is her birthing body, that she was created from a rib and not born from a Mother Goddess. The biblical tradition then continually replaces and/or obliterates feminine ritual acts such as dancing and acts of sacred sexuality. Women and feminine ways are revealed as unable to make the sacred or divine present. At its most revelatory, the Rib has women condemned as the source of sin and so necessarily and consequently in need of male salvation. As Adam "gave birth" to Eve's physical body so does her soul have to be saved through a spiritual re-birth effected by a male savior, which in the Christian tradition is the Second Adam, Jesus the Christ.

The point here is that mythic stories are ritually enacted in a People's world. Since the biblical West shuns the Shadow it is not surprising that the ritual way of handling Shadow creatures, that is, subhumans, is to cage them on the Inside. More, the secular West has re-expressed these biblical facts and truths through institutionalized rituals. Hardly any everyday citizen comes in contact with the criminal justice system and certainly not the correctional system. From a ritual perspective, the People shun and cast out criminals into the Inside world of subhumans and then have no contact with them while they are being "corrected." Once out, the average person has no way of knowing that, for example, I am a violent felon. I'm not arguing for branding, obviously, but the curious ritual of exit from the Inside was to re-enter the Sunlight world as invisibly as I exited it to enter prison.

Consider for a moment your own urban legends about prison, inmates, and ex-cons. You have probably never met an ex-con or been Inside, and what you do know comes more from the "facts and truths" revealed by prison reality-shows on cable TV than through learned histories or official reports. Nevertheless, I am confident that you have big answers to the big questions about who criminals are, how they came to a life of crime, what should be done to them, and why crime and criminals exist. I am also confident that most of what you think you know and believe is rank bullshit.

What is the mythic ritual you participate in concerning the Inside and convicts? This might be as hard for me to get you to discern as is the reality of your having two-bodies. The dominant mythic biblical stories (as repeated throughout this book) reveal that the Shadow realm is to be shunned, avoided, and ultimately obliterated in an apocalyptic event ushering in a "New Heaven and New Earth." This revelation states that Light will overcome and vanquish Darkness. So the ritual movement in the story of origin, here the Rib account, is to move away from the Shadow. While more needs to be said (and is below) about this ritual approach to the Shadow, just realize that in your everyday world your Sunlight story is that there is or should be no Shadow realm.

What then is your ritual movement when I identify as a violent felon? Honestly, if I sat down with you at table and told you that I was an ex-con (without explaining the details) would you count the silverware after I left? Or walk into the kitchen leaving your wife or daughter alone with me? Would you want to know my story and so engage my Shadow experience? And if so would you be anticipating that it would enlighten you about yourself? Or would you hear it like a TV show, that is, once I finished, you'd just change the channel?

Now consider how you would respond to me socially. Would you hire me? Be supportive if I was your child's college professor? Ask me to preach from the pulpit about all this? Or would you simply push me away and ask me not to return? Would you, in sum, ritually act out the mythic story of shunning and exiling subhumans? Or are you thinking that you would kneel down and pray for me, removing yourself from my presence as you place me "in the hands of God"? Would you absolve yourself from any need to engage me as a brother by uttering "There but for the grace of God go I?" Honestly, what would be your ritual movements?

Okay, to be fair, most Inside cons don't understand your one-bodied Sunlight world any better, and have their own urban legends about The Man, white folk, and so forth. They have their own ritual movements when you come into their realm, but right now I want you to work on understanding your one-body mythic story and how it makes you ritually move.

Another thing that I want you to note is that mythic stories are robustly sensual, typically involving ritual dances and ceremonies. This sensuality perdured even with the rise of non-oral cultures where the written mythic stories were ceremonially restricted to events held in special locations, namely, churches and temples ("houses of worship"). As noted on Pathway#1, I came to understand Endless Warring as an American social ritual. War, among its many characteristics, is replete with traditional military pomp and ceremony, and uses sacred texts, such as when swearing the oath to uphold the Constitution. As I came to understand how mythic stories were manifested in a culture I also realized how complex my task was since the primal emotional experience came first and the story (oral or written) second. So I would have to tap into the primal emotions of being a Captive and Captor before I could start to write my Outlaw Visions. Awake! Rung stories experiences must be explored first. Only then would I be able to start developing a new mythic story of origin. But evoking emotion required ritual because ritual taps into emotions (individual and group) whereas writing describes them.

Okay, I know that this is beginning to sound a bit tricky and slippery. But my approach makes sense when you grasp the how and why of the Captor/Captive primal emotions evoked by the Adjustment Committee's initiatory ritual of digitization. I don't know how—or whether at this moment—you can empathize and deeply feel the emotional and sensual upheaval effected by prison's ritual dehumanization and degradation of my personal self and body? Maybe you cannot. If not, just hold onto the intellectual insight that your own one-body identity and sense of body is, itself, the result of mythic rituals. To proceed, I had to explore and discover how my own one-bodied self was mythically formed so that I could discern how to tell my twice-bodied mythic story. This required that I go back to the biblical mythic stories of origin to discern and discover their ritual character and so discern their emotional basis and content.

Note, that this search for the emotional basis and content of mythic story required my discerning something that I had never been taught to do through my academic training, that is, discern and explore the stories of origins as rituals. I had to approach the mythic story of origin, e.g., biblical Genesis, as itself being a ritual. This harkens back to the peculiar characteristics of oral cultures where a story was not read but embodied through a public performance in which the whole group ritually participated. So I had to discern both the ritual movement and structure of the mythic story of origin.

While this approach is explored more thoroughly below, consider that this challenged me to not just understand the story line, e.g., "God created the world and it was good" and then evaluate it as historical fact and/or religious truth but to sense the primal emotion which the phrase tapped into and sought to evoke to create a bond among the biblical People. As odd as it might seem to you right now, since I was beginning to grasp my prison experience in terms of its rituals and primal emotions so was I re-exploring the biblical mythic stories in terms of how they functioned ritually, that is, what primal emotions they sought to evoke. One more time: When prison digitized me the storyline "fact" was that I became 8867-147, but the goal of the Adjustment Committee was to evoke a primal emotion within me, that is, make me bond with the other inmates as a powerless subhuman and Captive. So look at Genesis's two stories of origin in Chapters 1-3 as what the biblical Adjustment Committee told the Hebrew People so that they would both identify as one People under one name "Israel" and also and even more importantly bond together as that one People. For the Hebrews this evoked the primal emotion of feeling Chosen...evoked by a distancing move away from, as they embodied a dreadful fear of, the Other as not-Chosen.

Yet, what I tried to do back then and am doing now is made even more difficult when you realize that the significance and import of the oral basis of mythic stories has been lost for most Westerners as over time the stories were written down. As silently read or just heard without antiphonal responses, the text-bound mythic stories do not ritually "move." Below I will explain how I was sensitized to the dynamics of oral tradition as I encountered the oral characteristics of the contemporary street culture in which most inmates were raised. You will be surprised, possibly shocked to learn, that the Inside is an oral culture and that inmate express their sad stories through biblical conversations.

Only much later in time did cultures start to write down their mythic stories—create sacred texts ("scriptures"). In fact most cultures never wrote them down. Often when they were written down it was by outsiders who encountered them as stories of an alien culture—not uncommonly as a conquered people. What I took away from all of this became a core Outlaw Visions insight, that is, that before I could begin to explore a new mythic story that would ritually move me beyond being either Captor or Captive my starting point had to include a clarification of the experiential basis—the primal emotions—of the mythic stories of my own culture, here, Western biblical culture. I could not just evaluate them from an analytical or intellectual position. What was the rub here? Simply that, again, everything I had learned to date about how to interpret myths and do visions—all my academic and intellectual training—would be of little to no help at all for the task ahead!

This challenge was daunting in that I, as a scholar and intellectual, had to avoid intellectualizing my Inside experience. I had to discipline myself to stay focused on exploring what the gut experience of doing-time meant. Now I need you to clearly grasp this insight. What I had to do more than creatively write was force myself to confront my prison experiences in the raw so that you could—as directly as I could make it happen—be touched by your own subhuman emotions. Hear me: Not just touched by my own subhuman emotions but by your own. Yet our mutual barrier to empathy was that the words and images that you had inherited through our shared mythic story about Captor and Captive did not talk about subhumans or The Man's Bitch or the Shadow realm. Yet, your mythic story about prison did ground you in a primal emotion, mainly, dreadful fear.

Check yourself out: All I have to say to you is, "I'm a convicted violent felon," and more often than not your body instinctively recoils—or at the least your eyes became defensive. Yes? More, how did you, if you did read them, respond to the Rung stories in Chapter 5? Look, I'm as much a Captor as you are. By the time I began to write I had spent ten years working to overcome my own fear of myself as Captor of my Captive self, so I don't underestimate the enormity of the task I am still working on, namely, how to enable you to even consider struggling to overcome your own dreadful fear. I'll admit that, ever tapping into Shadow emotion, I proceed with a methodological sense of hopelessness, one only slightly kept under the control of my sense of commitment to you, my fellow (unaware) subhuman.

My ten year twice-bodied Dark Night struggle with all this, ironically or somewhat amusingly to some, was happening as I rose to a certain level of success in the corporate sales world. Right before I started writing in 1983 I had won several national Manager of the Year awards in the door-to-door encyclopedia business. I trained and managed sales teams of over three-hundred commission-only sales reps. For the next three decades I served as a senior sales and marketing manager or executive for small national companies, mostly start-ups. So I was quite active in my one-body world as my twice-bodied self was deep into the Shadow realm of the Inside, which as you might be anticipating, I never left although I had exited the physical prison institution.

Thin stories, shallow identities

In which identity phases did I experience upheaval and revolution when Inside? Although subhumans like the Mafia and gangs had personal, family, social, and cultural identities and stories, I did not. Other inmates not in a Shadow organization like the Mafia or gangs experienced the series of identities and stories but in a less formalized manner. These were men who basically lived on the streets. They were not necessarily homeless as much as their personal, family, social, and cultural identities and stories were fairly shallow or thin. This in contrast, say, to the Mafia guys who spoke of their families, social bonds, and cultural values in stories that spanned centuries. The same held true for gangs, many of which had generational family memberships—"legacies." The simple fact was that the deeper you got into the Shadow realm the thinner the stories and more shallow the identities became. For example, men who were "State raised" talked about family in terms of a series of foster homes or juvenile institutions, notably without much positive affection or memory. Their social story had very few chapters as they rarely had steady work, had never married, or had a list of short-term serial marriages, were commonly from broken families—as were their parents, and were in the main functional illiterates. As part of the criminal labor pool, the Mafia and gangs hired them as contract "hired hands" doing "jobs" as they came along. Few were aligned with the numerous stable Shadow social organizations that others, like gang members, maintained.

After losing my Catholic and American identities and stories I found that, emotionally, I had more in common with the street hustlers, long time losers, and misfit fuck-ups than I did with gang members or the Mafia guys. The latter two groups had their own version of a Sunlight story, one in which they were really good men at heart because, when all was said and done, they provided for their families. Rent money is rent money whether derived from selling heroin or stocks and bonds. I and the other deep Insiders were desperately holding onto rather flimsy Sunlight stories, if any at all. In prison parlance I heard from these new peers of mine that "Man, you're pulling hard time." This meant that I was royally fucked up and wouldn't have left the joint even if the guard opened the front gate and blew a trumpet while waving me to skedaddle. I was at that point in the Shadow realm where I just floated through time and space.

Summary

In prison I underwent a qualitative, heartfelt human transformation—I became a subhuman. Prison's Adjustment Committee set me off on my Dark Night of the Soul journey as it totally transformed me through the initiatory ritual of digitizing me as 8867-147. Ten years after parole, in 1983, I began to live quite robustly as twice-bodied—human and subhuman. As I attempted to speak with my subhuman voice I realized that I had to speak to one-body folk with terms such as the Inside, twice-bodied, The Man's Bitch, Shadow realm, Sunlight realm, and other quite odd, even alienating words and stories. My Outlaw Visions developed as I struggled to cope with the discovery of my second body—my subhuman flesh and blood—and discern a way to integrate it with my human self so that I could emerge as a real human person. I came to hold that unless and until you embody your subhuman self that you cannot become a real human person.

This disembodiment and re-embodiment transformation was effected through story and ritual but these were in service to a more important objective, that is, to ground me in the emotions of being a subhuman. In prison's darkest Shadow depths everything human is soon absent and being subhuman is less a lifestyle (as it was for Mafia and gangs) as it was a mode of survival. Long before I could verbalize it I was experiencing myself as The Man's Bitch. I had to admit that prison achieved what it always sets out to, that is, making the inmate a Slave of the State. I realized my subhumanness in terms that were once personal and mythic. In light of the sexually violent, especially sodomitic, character of the Inside, I had to admit and accept that I had become The Man's Bitch and as such a Fag. I found a sisterly connection here with Eve's role in the Rib account where she was told by her Shadow Mother that she was to find fulfillment through submissiveness and subordination to her Man, Adam. Servile, I bent over and on every level of reality got fucked in the ass. This sodomitic ritual was both the Captor's validation of my subhumanness and the seed to my Captive self-awakening while deep in the darkest sector of the Shadow realm.

As I reflected on how my Captive subhuman identity and story formed it clarified how my initial Captor Sunlight identity and story formed, that is, through a series of stories and identities. These included personal, family, social, cultural, and mythic identities and stories. Significantly, each identity and story made me aware of how to approach and value the Other—as friend or enemy, as family or foe. Prison had embodied me in a new identity which redefined my personal story but it did so through embodying me in a new mythic story. The Adjustment Committee's objective was to knock out of my head any and all one-body identities and stories and inject the seeds that gave rise to my personal identity as a subhuman inmate and my mythic identity as Captive.

The Adjustment Committee's subliminal instruction was that I was to learn nothing of value about myself or others while floating through sectors of the Shadow realm. The conscious goal I should adopt was to deny, denounce and condemn my pre-prison identities and stories and seek to live through the Captor's Sunlight glad story—that is, submit to being rescued from the Shadow realm, turn my back upon it, and live attempting to obliterate any memory of it.

Of all the insights being Inside forced me to face, the most crucial was that the biblical mythic story denies that there is any value to experiencing the Shadow realm. In the biblical Rib account the Shadow is the domain of a lesser creature, the Serpent, one who is not an equal of the Sunlight Father god. The Christian theological tradition proclaims that one can be rescued from the Shadow realm to live in an eternal Sunlight story. Of equal note is that women as daughters of Eve are the source of sinful temptation, that is, of a fall from grace (loss of Sunlight story and identity). This denial that Shadow experiences have any usefulness or value in enabling one to become fully human permeates secular American culture and myth as much as it does biblical and religious myth. Both mainstream secular and biblical history recount numerous attempts—at times crusades—to obliterate the Shadow realm and its subhumans (slaves, native people, gooks—the Enemy). If you don't grasp the pivotal significance of this fact, then it is near impossible for me to convince you about the necessity of forming a new mythic story, one that will enable you to become a real human person.

Since I was wrong—as I found out at my trial—about my Captor Sunlight glad story, everything in my life was in upheaval as I tried to figure out my Captive story while also determining what exactly my Captor story was. In both instances I realized that the personal and mythic stories had an unusual connection. As at trial where I was less FXK than I was mythic Peacemaker, so in prison I was less 8867-147 than I was mythic Captive—soon to realize myself as Captor of my Captive self.

But how to tell or write a mythic story? Was such possible, even if desired? I knew enough about the development of mythologies to grasp that such evolved over time from group input. But I latched onto one aspect of mythic story, namely, its origins in oral tradition. I realized that mythic stories were public performances whose content was embodied in the storyteller and whose objective was to evoke primal emotions that enabled the group members to bond at the deepest level. I took from this that I could only start on my journey if I worked hard not to intellectualize my experiences, rather to gut it out and lay it out in pictures of the pain.

What flipped the mythic storytelling switch was just such a primal emotional experience. As I reflected upon why I had not killed myself while in the darkest sectors of the Shadow realm I realized that a presence had prevented me from offing myself. This I sensed was a Mother but here a Shadow Mother, She who kept me alive but allowed me to suffer. I hated Her. Bitch!

Possibly the most radical and revolutionary experience and insight was that the mythic experienced is embodied in the intimate zone. I grasped that intimacy is a Shadow realm experience, and that it was in the intimate zone where I became the Captor of my Captive self. To form a new mythic story, I would have to explore my intimate zone to tap into the primal emotions that drove me to capture my own self.

However, because the biblical tradition denies the Shadow, I discerned that it was impossible for a biblical theologian/believer to become a real human person. Once I realized this I set forth to discern a new mythic story.
Chapter 8: Captive Sad and Captor Glad Story

  1. Inside experiences

Developing a methodology of the twice-bodied: Loss of language and listening to my "sad story"

Critical to grasping the particular character of my sad story is once again sitting with and getting a deeply heartfelt understanding of the import of the judge's rendering me "irrelevant and immaterial" at the close of my trial. Try for a minute to put yourself in the docket where you hear these words. Pay attention: This is a courtroom trial, not a game show! The consequences are life-shattering, just like on the battlefield. Everything you ever knew about yourself or told to others as to your dreams and values—Poof!—you are royally fucked! So listen like you've never listened before to my direct but admittedly strange sounding claim that I lost my language. Here again my loss of language is not hyperbole. I am not speaking allegorically. I intend no metaphor. I simply had vocal sounds but not language, no vehicle for communicating with you.

Fatefully, this loss of language heightened my sensitivity to the sad stories of other inmates. If I had retained a patina of Catholic identity or a desire to reclaim myself as an American, I would have spent my Inside time constructing a glad story that would serve to protect me from prison's cruelties and numb my twice-bodied sensing. As I could not speak, I could not hear myself weave such a glad story. Rather I only had Shadow ears, ones primed to hear the mythic echoes in the seemingly mundane stories of these dregs of society, these ill educated, often crude, in the main not very appealing criminals. As I listened the most startling insight that slapped me in the face was that I was not supposed to be hearing these stories as a fellow subhuman. As a highly educated, white, middle-class male I was an odd and rare inmate who had chosen prison—in quirky Marxist terms "took a class option" and opted to become a subhuman.

Yet my class perspective and intellectual background did prove useful. As I was the odd man out for both my Captors and fellow convicts, I was aware of my twice-bodiedness in a way that most inmates were not. It was mentally and emotionally overwhelming to simultaneously live in two bodies. In no time at all, most inmates surrendered to one-bodiedness by accepting being just a convict. They "adjusted" and did as advised: "Do your own time!"

In like manner, Captors resisted the two-bodied awareness. Hacks did not talk about themselves as Captors. Much like the foot soldier who never considers himself a murderer, these "correctional officers" had no sense of their Shadow roles. In the few early chats I did have, notably with younger, rookie guards, they described themselves and me in the mythic terms of their Captor glad story, that is, they were Guardians, Protectors, and Moral Reformers whereas I was the deviant Criminal, Outlaw, Bad Guy, and, specifically in my case, Betrayer. They were not there to listen to my sad story and then provide guidance about how to use that to create a Sunlight story, no, they were simply there to punish and hopefully kill off my Shadow self. They certainly did not want to enter my or their own Shadow realm. That is why everything inside prison is reduced to harsh and cruel black-and-white conditions. The guards must distance themselves from inmates as humans to remain within one-body consciousness. They want the inmate to be Other or alien, and they refuse to recognize themselves in the faces of the cons—with whom many share several salient social characteristics, such as being or coming from the working poor, the marginally educated, and as military veterans. When talking with me, the guards were initially attracted by but then rejected my social status as a teacher, minister, or potential fellow bureaucrat. Over time I myself was fatigued by trying to be twice-bodied and I slipped away from my family, all visitors, and contact with the Outside. I played a lot of basketball.

Biblical conversations

Phyllis Trible, a seminal feminist Old Testament scholar, introduced and employed the concept of sad story in her Texts of Terror (1984). When she approached these biblical "texts of terror," she reflected on "telling sad stories." These were ancient stories of "the slave used, abused, and rejected." Of "an unnamed woman, the concubine raped, murdered and dismembered." She was further inspired by the contemporary sad stories of the sufferings of streetwalkers and homeless women, and by attending a memorial service for nameless women. Finally, she mentioned her own "wrestling with the silence, absence and opposition of God."

In one instance, Trible noted that "a black woman describe[d] herself as a daughter of Hagar outside the covenant...an abused woman on the streets of New York with a sign, My name is Tamar." Likewise, I found that in prison twice-bodied consciousness was often biblically self-aware, and as such grounded in deep cultural sad stories. As I listened to inmates' stories I was taken aback by the clarity with which they mirrored biblical stories. When listening to academic philosophers, theologians, or other intellectuals, I would not have paused if they framed their views and beliefs in a deep cultural story, such as in Western culture's biblical stories. I would have considered it a bit of literary artfulness for one of them to identify with a mythic character—say, compare themselves to Job or Odysseus or Jesus. Yet I was surprised to encounter this framework on the popular level.

I cannot overstate the importance of understanding this biblical framework of everyday Inside conversations. These inmate conversations were properly mythic in that they were gut-checks and not airy intellectual fugues. They had meaning for inmates in a passionate way. So inevitably when the issue of violence versus nonviolence or racism versus universal brotherhood or sexism versus the equality of women arose, inmates would mention Cain and Abel, Original Sin, Adam's dominion in the Rib account, and/or God's wrath as just punishment.

More conversations than not were spiced with "Slap the bitch!" accounts, and if that was challenged I'd hear about Eve and women as seducers—actually whores was the favored image. You might not think that guys would say—but they did—"God took 'em from me" as a rib was tapped and the simple theological point made that, "Wimmen are meant to serve their man. That's what my preacher say!"

Then a twice-bodied insight burst forth. Prison was all about "Slap the bitch!" and the bitch was me! Ever so slowly but inevitably prison's relentless degradation was turning me into the stereotypical patriarchal woman who only found meaning through submission to her man—the Adjustments were taking hold! "Adam and Eve, man!" I was Eve. What most cons drew from the Garden story was that the phallus is supreme. It might be hard to believe but it was said, "Why was the guy first?" Meaning, Adam was created first and Eve from his body. This "fact" was most often uttered as if making a biological claim.

As described in the Rung stories, this phallic claim was ritually acted out Inside. Prison reality was, during the first half hour after lights-out, that blankets were draped around bunks and penile activities ensued. Certain inmates were addressed—even by the guards—with feminine names. I learned how "bitches" were bartered and traded, with cigarettes being currency. Triumphal violence meant sodomizing your enemy. Sodomy was ultimate victory or final defeat.

These popular biblical conversations taught me, 1) that popular understanding came primarily from preaching. Inmates had heard their visions from the pulpit more than from Bible class. This was consonant with street life, which is primarily an oral culture. 2) Popular stories were melded stories. For example, there was no awareness that the Bible was a literary text with accounts written at different times and by various authors. All was written by God or Moses or Jesus. In this light, the first story of origin in Genesis 1 ("it was good") was not differentiated from the second one in Genesis 2–3 (the Rib account) and both were read as if the same story. 3) Further melding these ancient stories with an inmate's personal life right now was unchallenged. God was acting—"Right here, man, in the Stone!" These three insights became increasingly significant as I struggled to determine how to interpret individual and group stories and understand how they expressed the deep cultural stories of a family. Most notably, this popular biblicism provided a ready justification for sexual violence, although no one that I remember ever talked about Abraham and Sarah and their treatment of Hagar. With twice-bodied sensing, coffee-time conversations revealed and occurred within a persistent biblical framework.

In sum, I found inmate stories to be primal and mythic. Every teller was an outlaw. With street smarts, not academic insights, they were aware that they were living outside the lawful social order and cultural story—that they had committed crimes, transgressed, violated taboos of Church and State. As I listened, biblical stories came alive. The deep cultural mythic stories became current: Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden. Brother against brother: As Cain, they rejoiced in bloodshed. The war of the sexes: As Adam, they boasted about dominating their women—"Slap the bitch!" Acts of abusive parents: thrown out of their homes (gardens of Eden) by condemning, often sexually abusive and rageful parents. All chapters in a family's biblically rooted sad story that could be aptly titled, "Sinners in the hands of an angry god."

Twice-bodied listening

I realized that for me prison as a mythic zone had echoes of Genesis' Garden of Eden. Often while walking around the oval path at the center of the prison's yard, I sensed that I was walking through the Garden of Eden where the angel with the flaming sword stood sentry, but in my account to keep me Inside not cast me out. As I listened to inmate stories I kept hearing echoes of the angry words of the biblical Father god who railed at his children and condemned them after they discovered their fuller humanity—ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil (Sunlight and Shadow). I heard Him judge them as "irrelevant and immaterial," truly, He was so intolerant of hearing about their emergence from subhumanity that He damned and cast them out of Paradise to suffer living on a cursed Earth.

Cursed Earth, then, is biblical Shadow land. It is a place to flee from, be saved from. More, cursed Eve embodies the Shadow, and she is to be fled from, saved from. The Shadow, here the Mother, the feminine, contains nothing of value in terms of becoming fully human. Rather the Mother and the feminine, in the person of Eve, were blamed for the presence of Serpentine evil. Wow. These insights really rocked my world. I had to painfully accept that I had livied denying the presence of Mother in my life as I praised "Our Father who art in heaven." Struck by a bolt of lightning I gasped, "I am a motherless child!"

It should be clearly noted that, in the mid-1980s, I did not go back to explore Genesis because I was a faithful biblical person. The Rung story experiences had so blown me away, up and out of my one-body into my twice-bodiedness, that all I wanted to do was settle with my biblical past as I forged ahead with my search for who my prison Shadow Mother was. I was seeking a mythic and visionary language that went beyond the biblical tradition, but before I started my theological imaginings of who Mother might be, I wanted to know how and why I had deviated from the traditional theological interpretations of biblical stories. My mythic deviance from the biblical tradition was evidenced by my guiding question, "Are we humans motherless children?"—which was driving me nuts!

So I went back to Genesis simply to clarify for myself what the biblical tradition said and identify those stories that I had misinterpreted so badly. I was twice-bodied and accepted that I was an outlaw—that my nonviolent disobedience violated Torah, canon, and American law. But I had to scratch a scholarly itch. I accepted that I had to approach these patriarchal mythic stories with respect for them on their own terms if I was to fully and finally understand why, where, and how I had erred and gone wrong—or had rightly rejected them.

Since I had embraced my prison Shadow Mother and was living twice-bodied, with human and subhumans senses, when I re-encountered Genesis Her presence was subhumanly with me. I knew that the biblical tradition was monotheistic and patriarchal so I did not expect that the Bible would offer any insights concerning my prison Mother. I simply thought that Genesis would provide a negative starting point—that is, clarify who She was not.

Although I thought re-reading Genesis would be a brief and easy exercise, I quickly found myself stuck in Genesis's first chapters, especially the Rib story. I thought that I knew Genesis but then I had to accept that I really didn't. Of the two biblical stories of origin, I knew that the Rib story dominated the interpretation of Genesis in the mainstream Christian tradition—due in great part to the influence of the early Church Father, Augustine of Hippo.

I had read Chapter 2-3's Rib story I'm sure at least a hundred times. Yet as I read it this time something kept me from going beyond the Rib account. I was perplexed. I found myself struggling much as I had in prison. What was going on? I soon realized that I was resisting acknowledging Her presence—that my prison Shadow Mother was there in Genesis, once again bracing me, forcing me to stay, barring the exit. Here again, this Mother who was always willing to watch me suffer was holding me. Why? For some reason—so I sensed Her intention—I had to "do time" in the Garden of Eden. The fucking bitch!

" **Doing Garden time"**

"Doing Garden time" aptly describes the experience upon which all of my insights into the character of my subhumanity, the purpose prison serves in the formation of sad stories, and how I learned to interpret mythic stories and theologize as an outlaw are sourced and grounded. Doing Garden time is the wellspring for my interpretive insights and twice-bodied methodology. Please note and remember: My time in the Garden of Eden was like a return to prison's visiting room. There I had observed a key aspect of how inmates who told me their sad stories were interacting with their families.

In the visiting room the inmate often moved into the dynamics of the lie. He would confess the errors of his ways in an attempt to remain within the family's good graces. He wanted the family to accept him upon release. So he promised and swore that he would change, go straight, fly right, and come home reformed by biblical, mainly Christian, virtues. In a sense he was saying that he was going to act like a normal, decent human being. However, in the eyes and bodily movements of the families, I could read how untrue they knew this was. They knew that in the visiting room almost everything was an act or word of misdirection. They were tuned into the inmate's subhuman voice. They felt the bloodlust in his subhuman heart. They knew that he wanted revenge and that instead of getting better their inmate family member was getting worse—more violent; forlorn.

Their inmate's sad story required that he lie, that he misdirect the family. He knew that everyone wanted to hear a glad story of rescue—"I'm reformed!" or "I'm saved!" At heart, the families did not want to acknowledge the twice-bodied sad story that predicted that a high percentage of their current teenage/young adult generation would also end up "doing time." They knew—without quoting recidivism statistics—that their inmate would more than likely offend again, end up back Inside. Truly, the families knew all the lies, knew that in the visiting room lying was required to shield everyone—Captors and Captives, family and society—from the violent truth of their own twice-bodied subhumanness.

Methodology of the twice-bodied

Gradually, a Captive sad story methodology of the twice-bodied took form. Its grounding was the experience a subhuman has of a peculiar sense of presence that emerges as he grasps that what is reality for subhumans is not so for the Captor. That what is visible is invisible, and vice versa. That what is directly stated is misdirection. For example, a visitor to the prison yard sees neatly dressed, seemingly pacific, even mannerly men, but not the psychic pools of blood on the ground. Prison appears quiet. Visitors do not hear the cacophony of a lifetime of violent whacks and thuds, the whimperings of the violently raped, the cracking of bones as arms were broken, skulls split, and ribs shattered by batons and bullets that ricocheted off prison walls.

Searching for hints of misdirection, I challenged the way I had heard Genesis before prison. Historically, I first heard Genesis 1–3 in catechism class told as a foundational religious story and one that the nuns simultaneously translated into popular socio-cultural messages and values. In graduate school I listened to scholarly analyses and interpretations and came to value these over the nuns' popularizations. Now, after detecting the biblical framework of inmate sad stories, I reevaluated my approach and decided to meld the popular with the scholarly. I would guide my analysis and interpretation using scholarship while simultaneously testing everything against the insights of the sad stories that came through the popular discourse. With the clues that scholarship offered, I would focus on the Genesis stories as if formed by contemporary popular culture and popular religion, as if hearing these sad stories in prison's visiting room. As I began to listen to Genesis 1–3 as if back in prison, it presented itself as a story alive in contemporary imagination and spirituality.

Finally, I would add my own sad story to this melding and analyze and evaluate with my subhuman sensing, which meant listening to my prison Mother as She guided me. My interpretive matrix included (1) inmate popular biblical renditions, (2) scholarly insights, (3) my personal Captive sad story experience as it interacted with my own Captor's glad story, and (4) the guidance of my prison Mother.

B. Discoveries

Mother of the twice-bodied

As mentioned, when I was paroled in June of 1973 I began my ten-year "Dark Night of the Soul" journey, and in 1983 the journey took a turn towards the Sunlight as, reflecting on all that I had lost—Church, State, my academic career, "normalcy"—I asked myself, "Why didn't you whack yourself while in prison?" The answer, I sensed at that moment, was in understanding my subhumanness. I felt totally odd as I struggled to find words and images to describe twice-bodiedness. Words like subhuman, slave, The Man's bitch—these were not in the theological dictionary or the tomes of spiritual directors. Tellingly, a line of my first published Outlaw Visions essay ("Prison, Bottoming out, the Mother," 1988) was that "I would leave (prison) as a pilgrim in search of fuller communion with the Mother." I wrote this but I did not completely know what it meant. By that time I had read the early feminist theologians and nascent Goddess movement "theaologists," but this Mother wasn't their Her. All that I knew was that while deep in a savage sector of prison's Shadow realm, someone was present who held me and embraced me. Without reason I shouted "Mother!" Awake! I was present to my Shadow Mother.

As a human is born through a Sunlight mother so is a subhuman through a Shadow Mother. This is an Inside revelation, that we are all twice-bodied, an embodiment of both Shadow and Sunlight selves. As I awoke to my subhuman body so did I sense the presence of Her, my Shadow Mother, She who kept me alive but watched me suffer. Remember what I said before: This was not a comforting, sentimental presence. Not a "Good Mother" or mommy touch. It definitely was not one of protection. Rather, this Mother was present to me as She accepted my enslavement. She kept me alive and did not allow me to kill myself. Of note, She did not sever my chains. I hated Her.

I feared Her. She refused to let me escape into fantasy or denial. She braced me with Her arms when I cringed and howled against the violence. I did not understand Her way of mothering because—while She was present as my knees buckled, my soul was raped, my body thrown on the garbage heap of psychic violence that was prison's heartbeat—She did not relieve me of my suffering. She accepted that I was The Man's bitch—She accepted me subhumanly. Who was She who rocked me to sleep each night with soothing slave lullabies?

Biblical Shadow realm

As cited above, Phyllis Trible's concept of "sad story" proved to be insightful. Here I found a framework to work within. She approached scriptural stories of women, mostly enslaved and otherwise abused, by listening to their sad stories. She especially spoke of Hagar, the Egyptian slave of Abraham and Sarah, who was also their sex slave. (Genesis 16) Trible's concept of sad story placed a value on biblical characters who dwelt in the Shadow realm. She did not use "Shadow"—or present the concept of "glad story"—but I had never before read anything which so clearly evoked the Shadow side of the biblical tradition.

Hagar and the other women discussed by Trible were living in the Shadow realm not by choice—in one way or another each had been captured. Abraham and Sarah disembodied Hagar, made her twice-bodied. She suffered sexual violence under the biblical form of patriarchy where biblical women were all Shadow sisters like Eve who acted as if they had no Mother and found meaning as women in submissive service to their man. It was clear to me that Sarah was the Shadow Mother I had met in prison. She kept Hagar alive but did not try to prevent her from being sexually abused, demeaned, or subordinated. Sarah facilitated Abraham's phallic triumph and so ensured his place as leader of the Hebrew clan.

Trible's women were all The Man's bitches. Hagar was war booty and others were prostitutes owned by their pimps. For survival all bitches—including me!—had to find some way to develop a personal "glad story" (however thin!) if we were to survive and eventually escape out of the Shadow into the Sunlight. For me Hagar's sad story was that she had to act like the model patriarchal female, that is, accept being a Captive through surrendering her body to the whims of both her Masters, here a Hebrew man and woman.

I greatly admired Trible's courage in opening her own Shadow self so that others would discern their own sad story and so begin their journey towards Sunlight. However, her work took me just so far because her claim was that she touched Hagar's soul through womanly empathy and sympathy. I was beyond knowing Hagar through empathy and sympathy because by the time I first read Trible I was already in the presence of my prison Shadow Mother—She who kept me alive but watched me suffer. I realized that I touched Hagar's soul because hers was subhumanly mine. It was mine to be faithful to Hagar by accepting that as a fellow slave only I could plumb the meaning of my own captivity. I had to be Hagar writing. Sympathy and empathy were not options, rather I had to plunge into my Shadow realm, there to experience and hear my own sad story, suck it up and say Yes, I am 8867-147. "It wasn't a gook, it was me!" It was mine to accept that it was my obligation to all Captives and subhumans to attempt to tell a glad story derived from our shared sad story experience of being a subhuman.

Each time I began to write I kept running head first into the recurring theological barrier that in my religious upbringing and biblical training the dark side Shadow realm was Satan's domain—hell—a place to flee, not somewhere to work on developing a Shadow identity. Those caught in Satan's clutches were sinners, some demons, all not redeemable. But I entered Satan's Shadow realm and learned that there are no demons, only people in the Shadow realm. They are subhuman people, not some supernatural demons. On Earth there are only human people.

Hagar was on Israel's Inside not through any personal sinful act but simply because she was Other, one of an alien people, here Egyptians, who were enemies of God's Chosen People, Abraham and Sarah. Hagar showed me that people who get caught in the deepest, most abandoned sectors of the Shadow realm as she was as a sex slave are often there because of social structures such as racism, sexism and militarism. As war booty Hagar was not just a strange Other but a mythic Other, a Captive. As war booty she was also sexual treasure.

Until Trible, when I had previously read about Hagar and the other women, I—a one-bodied theologian—simply assumed that they were guilty and deserved their captivity and/or suffering. Since these were fallen or pagan women and I was a son of Adam I heard my biblical god say that such women were the source of sin, true daughters of Eve who listened to the Serpent, the Evil One and so deserved hell. Awake! Here was both an insight into and a barrier raised by the mentality of the Captor and a tenet of Captor Glad Story—that if you're in the Shadow realm you must have done something really bad, even demonic. You—captive, inmate, The Man's bitch—were at fault, not anyone else, especially not your Captors (who lived solely within their Sunlight story). Here I intuited that to break-out of my Captor glad story I had to affirm that no one deserves to be held as Captive—nowhere and never!

Likewise before I entered prison I rarely doubted that any inmate was truly innocent. I never consciously thought that the criminal justice/penal system was corrupt or unjust—a perspective and belief that came slowly and with much resistance to the solidly middle-class, conservative mind of Catholic me. As twice-bodied, I came to realize that I could face my Captor story and my Captive story simultaneously, moving me in and out of the Shadow and Sunlight realms.

As mentioned—but it bears repeating due to its significance—the core Christian belief was that anyone who entered Satan's realm needed to be saved. This meant that once inside the Shadow realm you could not get out by your own effort or merit—you had to be rescued. This need to be rescued from the Shadow realm was the main theme of the "Ransom Theory of Atonement" which had been the leading explanation of the meaning of Salvation during the first few Christian centuries. For certain contemporary Christians "rescue" is still an acceptable theory of salvation. It is conveyed by the phrase "Christus Victor" or Christ the Victor. The glad story of rescue that follows is that Christ descended into Hell, the Shadow realm, and tricked Satan. Ransom theory holds that Christ's death served as a form of recompense. The fall of Adam and Eve had involved the selling of souls to Satan, so it was believed that Satan had a just claim on human souls as the result of Original Sin. In this light, God through Jesus completed a fair sales transaction: Jesus in exchange for all those in Satan's clutches. However, Satan got conned. He thought that he could hold Christ, but of course he couldn't. Once this ransom bait-and-switch caper was completed—with Jesus then ascending out of Hell—God was able to free humans from the Devil's grip. Consequently, dealing with the Shadow realm required being rescued.

The Ransom Theory underscored the fact that Satan was not the biblical god's equal. He was not a Dark God. There was none! Only the biblical god was Good. Consequently, there was no biblical way of theologizing about the Shadow realm—it was simply a realm that would be obliterated during the Second Coming, when the Messiah returns.

Another impact of this Christian salvation story was that only Jesus can save you—you cannot save yourself. In this vein, the basic character of Christian spirituality was presented as a journey that you are on all by yourself. You did not require human help of any sort, and anyway such help would be ineffectual. (So no "self-help" journals in this spiritual tradition.) The spiritual quest remained a relationship that was solely between you and God—for Christians this became a "Jesus and me" visions. Here was a loud echo of my Adjustment Committee's counsel on how to survive time Inside—"Do your own time!"

Two critical insights dawned on me. 1) That in the biblical tradition there was nothing to learn by being in the Shadow realm, and 2) only God-in-Jesus had the escape plan and could spring you. These insights enabled me to readily grasp how prison operates. Prison rejects Shadow stories (sees them as lame excuses, as whining) and the way back to normalcy is to renounce one's past deeds and pledge to be faithful to the Captor's Sunlight glad story. However, this common message forwarded by both the biblical and prison system stood in dramatic, basically contradictory, contrast to my actual Inside experience. I learned—the hard way—in contrast to the foregoing that 1) the only way to the Sunlight was through the Shadow realm, which 2) is a journey through one's own quite peculiar and particular Dark Night. Yet—and this unnerved me—3) there was an absolute need for another: for an Other. However, this Other was not a rescuer but rather an intimate.

I realized that I would only escape into Sunlight if I opened myself to the intimate embrace of my Shadow Mother, accepted Her dark mothering, and simply gutted it out to survive as a subhuman. Note well: This was a dark experience of intimacy but it also revealed that the quest for intimacy begins in the Shadow realm where once we accept being embraced as subhuman we can then embrace our human self and so emerge as a real human person.

I unleashed a new mythic vision when I melded my Shadow and Sunlight experiences. Meditating with both Genesis's Shadow Rib's sad and Sunlight's "let us" glad stories is how I became mythic. Realize: If you mediate in this manner you will be experientially thrust outside the biblical tradition because when melded together the two stories give rise to a deeper insight into human origins, starting with, "Blessed be our Mother!"

In discovering my mythic vision I gained insight into why Christianity has failed to create a world in which you and I can dwell peacefully and comfortably at home. When the early Christians identified the human Jesus with the supernatural and mythic Christ figure, they, in effect, made it impossible for you to create your own mythic vision. When you read the tortured language of the early doctrinal Councils of the tradition, you end up with a dead-end idea such as a man-god, an historical figure who was "fully god and fully man." There was no room here to develop a fuller concept of humanity because Jesus was exclusively fully human and the Christ was exclusively fully divine.

Noted sainted theologians such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas twisted and turned natural and supernatural concepts until they came up with the almost impossible to comprehend notion that Jesus was God because God was not one but three persons yet still one. They added a neutered Holy Spirit—and not a feminine Mother—and proclaimed yet another wildly imaginative notion of a "Holy Trinity." The practical end result of all this theological yoga was that only Jesus embodied the one and only mythic story and identity when he became the Christ. You and I cannot call ourselves Christ. So, in the biblical Christian tradition Jesus was the only one with a mythic vision. You and I were simply born too late. In total contrast, after meeting my Shadow Mother in prison, I was driven for a decade (albeit a Dark Night decade) to find my own mythic story. I came to accept that She is my Mother and He is my Father—divine parents—and that to become a real human person I had to embrace Her and Him, and that this could only be creatively achieved by my embracing an Other—here, you. My mythic vision arose not from my mind but from my gut driven, heartfelt embrace of you as precious and beloved.

So— _Blow my mind!_ —on my journey towards discovering my full humanity I was not simply on my own. Mine was not to be a quest of a lone heroic rugged individualist but rather it was to be an embracing journey where I moved forward as I developed a relationship with my Shadow Mother. Here emerged another key insight and challenge of Outlaw Visions, that the beginnings of a glad story required a profound revolution as to my sense of self as now human and subhuman. To realize this I had to accept—and return!—my Shadow Mother's embrace. In brief, I had to listen to my Captor glad story and Captive sad story and use both to discover my full humanity.

Although Trible's approach helped me start writing my own sad story chapter, I realized that I had never read another theologian who theologized starting with a personal sad story as I was doing, and certainly not with a discussion of his or her subhumanity. Most theologians, Trible included (as I read her), were not Captives but from the Captor class. I deeply respected Trible's work and wanted to honor her by developing my own sad story. Again, I was aware that most folk don't talk about their sad stories in terms of subhumanity. People relate their sufferings and abuses but mostly as part of a larger glad story which ultimately says, "See I'm a good person. Love me." In contrast, right from the start, I felt an urgency to not only recount my own sad story but to integrate and value my Shadow realm experiences and so live in the normal world as twice-bodied, as human and subhuman—as despised, hated, disposable, invisible entities: as the least among others. In this way, so I intuited, I will begin to sense everything differently. I had a lot of sorting out to do but I was confident that eventually a new vision of what it means to live as a real human person would arise.

Captor Glad Story

Fuck, I am the Captor!

Even though I had the jolting insight that I was the Captor of my Captive self fairly early into my stay at Sandstone, the core themes of my Captor story would unfold slowly over the decades after prison. At first I had a typical one-body reaction to this weird situation. I saw myself as an aberration, as "not really" a convict. Yes, I want into denial. I denied being either a Captor or a Captive. I certainly did not want to own my situation of being subhuman, and I had no consciousness at the time about my Captor heritage. Despite my heartfelt moral commitment to Resistance I desperately wanted to get out of prison as quickly as I could. So I thought the more I acted like a Captor the quicker that might happen. Now I obviously wasn't talking to myself in those terms but I was acting it out.

I stopped Resisting. Other than my meltdown in the pastel blue Segregation unit, I turned out to be a model "adjusted" inmate. I did not follow my nonviolent protesting discipline on the Inside as I had on the Outside. I convinced myself that this made sense. After all the Vietnam War was, in some ways, no longer a part of my world (or so one-bodied me wanted to believe). It is not that I immediately did anything dramatic, rather it was all the stuff that I wasn't doing that tells the story. I wasn't Resisting anything. I was just doing time. However, little did I know where the Shadow road really wends. I was about to go deeper Inside as I actually went Outside.

" **Right to Read" program**

About half-way through what turned out to be my stay at Sandstone the director of the Education Department called me over. He knew about my academic background, especially my work at the student Newman Center at the U of Minnesota. He was still making his way up the Corrections career ladder and he excitedly shared with me that he wanted Sandstone to become one of the selected few in a federally funded "Right to Read" project. Instead of being an Inside program which would teach illiterate inmates (the percentage of which was unbelievably high) this was a program that would place an inmate Outside in the local elementary school as a reading aide. This was 1973 and there were still some Federal Bureau of Prison professionals who believed in rehabilitation programs. What the Director wanted me to do was assist in the selection of the least controversial inmate to send. As he knew from his preparatory work with the local Principal, Peggy Cahoon, this project was a powder-keg topic among the townsfolk as this inmate would be working with the guards' wives who were teachers and their kids who were students.

We reviewed the pluses and minuses of sending out a Mafia guy. Hell, they were well behaved, even super-models of prison behavior. Like my recruiter, these men were still getting paid and their families taken care of, so they settled in as if on an Inside vacation. However we were in rural northeast Minnesota and god only knows what the locals thought Mafioso were like. (As an aside, when my black-haired, olive skinned, Calabria descended, East Coast Italian brother-in-law moved to Minnesota in 1961 my father was asked if his son-in-law was a Negro.) Then we considered the white-collar criminals, such as a dentist who was in on a tax evasion rap. He was highly intelligent but we thought possibly too slick for Principal Cahoon to manage. Dopers of course came up. They were mainly college educated white guys. Anything drug related, however, was a Hippie invasion! public relations disaster just waiting to happen. Lastly, we looked at the COs—war resisters. Hmmm. The nation's attitudinal tide hadn't quite shifted yet but maybe the Education Director sensed something positive was happening in D.C. So after talking with the guys and weighing the pros and cons, I recommended one of the Minnesota 8, Charlie Turchick.

Chuck was a Phi Beta Kappa in Philosophy from the U of Minnesota. He had played on the University's table tennis team. More importantly, he was short (I'm Jeff and he's Mutt in the group) and very reserved—not your image of a scary convict. His demeanor, however, cloaked one of the quickest minds and sharpest tongues I've ever met—and been a target of! Yet, at the 11th hour, one week before the start date, the Director turns to me and says, "Kroncke, I want you to do this." Me? Imposing at 6'3" and 235 in great shape. Me? The nonstop talker, rebel preacher...Oh, hell, I said, "Okay."

As unanticipated as anything I've told you yet is that I actually formed a personal bond with the Principal. This was partly due to the John Birch Society. I am not making this up. As the semester was ending and the Board of Education was considering re-certifying the project, my face once again was plastered under a headline story in the Minneapolis Tribune. The Bircher national journal had recently published an article in which they highlighted this reading program and attacked me as an "erstwhile revolutionary." The townsfolk crammed into the Board meeting. Judgment: I was sainted once again! Actually, my work was commended and the project reapproved. (Let's give a cheer for the broadmindedness and big hearts of small town folk!) Principal Cahoon and I kept in touch for years, and one time I even went back up to visit and meet with my former students. So, all in all not such a bad gig, eh? Not really.

Little did I know what a steep drop down on the twisting road into the depths of the Shadow realm my selection would turn out to be. What on the surface appeared to be a "good deed," that is, convict giving his highly skilled talents to help children in need—Ha!—really agitated the guards. Furor! In a way that few inmates ever experienced I showed my nuts and butt to more venomous eyes than I care to remember. Every morning was simply lovely: I got up, dressed in prison garb, had breakfast, walked over to an inspection room: bent over, spread my smile...dressed in civvies and got on the bus to go into town. At day's end, the procedure was reversed. Do you think that even one guard ever passed up a chance to fuck with me a bit? Hmmm. There were second butt checks, and lingering moments in the nude as I waited for my change of clothes, and not so veiled threats, and some very direct, "We don't like what you're doing, asshole." (That's the polite version.)

I found out several things that I believe I wouldn't have if I hadn't had this educational adventure. Every day I felt how much the guards hated the inmates. The Hack's mantra was, "We should just go ahead and kill all you stupid motherfuckers!" fuming and sputtering, feigning a hand on his gun, pretending to snap it out of its holster to blow my brains out. That type of hate. I heard myself verbally maligned as nothing less than a soldier of Satan. My masculinity was challenged with every queer, homo, gay, ass-reaming taunt you can imagine. I actually feared that one of these dumbass motherfuckers would stab me during a nighttime Lock up and Count! round. I really came to know myself as Other, as enemy, as gook.

Mythic scale

In this context I increasingly came to experience myself as subhuman on the mythic scale because they focused so much Shadow energy at me with slaying intent that I began to consciously see myself approach them as an Evil One. In my mind's eye I strode towards the morning Hack as if rising from the pit of hell. My steps thundered and shook the prison walls. My feet were afire and lightning bolts flashed and...In truth I actually tasted bile rise up. I chomped down and swallowed hard on a lot of early morning revenge omelets. In time it dawned on me that I was quasi-hallucinating like this each morning because I was actually empathetically embodying the deep fear that gripped them. Hmmm. I realized that of course they didn't have a fucking clue about me—these were the line Hacks, not the higher ups—but it was as clear as clear can be that in my person I was who they feared I was: the Enemy!

On Pathway #3 I'm going to talk about adopting a daily practice of "living as if I am no one's enemy." My commitment to daily practice arose from this situation. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I had more than a few moments where I wanted to really hurt one or two of these motherfucking Hacks—even to really wanting to kill one particularly vindictive asshole. Anyway, this was me struggling in the depths of my subhumanness to not become a Hack, that is, not act as they were. It was me struggling with trying not to become the Captor of my Captive self. Part of the reason I adapted this "live as if I am no one's enemy" approach, I'm sure, is that it was just too overwhelming to constantly engage this Captor-Captive negativity. It had to be something of a survival tactic. Yet in time I did start to consciously practice finding within myself enough love—and fearlessness—to simply stand buck-naked before a Hack and not act as if I were his enemy, that is, not accept his fear by not returning it with my fear. That's the one thing my Captor couldn't control, that is, he could call me enemy but I didn't have to live as his enemy.

Wait: Let's not gloss over this insight. This daily strip-and-smile routine was like opening a wound time and again. Don't be misled by envisioning me in civvies, teaching young kids, with everything being normal. Fucking listen up! I stood before these kids and ate with the teachers as twice-bodied. If I had stayed Inside and not taken this role I could have remained in a one-body version of an inmate just doing time. But here I was on the Outside looking as if I were human and knowing that everyone knew, especially the adults, that I was a subhuman. More, that each one of them would not hesitate to immediately expose my subhumanness if I did anything that displeased them. "Mr. Kroncke did 'x.' What did we expect? After all he is a criminal. Send him back."

" **Live as if I am no one's enemy"**

I came to my "live as if I am no one's enemy" not while meditating upon the grandeur of life as I sat on a mountain top, no, it came to me in the deepest cavern in the stinkiest part of the Shadow realm where I met myself as the subhuman my Captor wanted me to be, as his intimate enemy. No doubt, prison often turns guys around, either towards Sunlight or deeper into the Shadow. I went so far down that I came out the proverbial other side. Of course I did not even know at the time that I was at one of those peculiar sectors where the Sunlight and the Shadow meld and visions arise—at the place where I met myself as enemy. There I embraced myself as the enemy of myself as enemy. Then I had to not be the enemy of my enemy self—I had to live as if I wasn't my own enemy. That's how the Mobius Shadow road all of a sudden slips into the next dimension—I was so far Inside that I came Outside. It took almost ten years but eventually I embodied my subhumanness and so embodied my fuller humanity, and became a real human person.

Yet there is another twist in the Right to Read story. As is known, no good deed goes unpunished, and one guy who stuck it to me for "cooperating with The Man" by being involved with this program was a black war Resister—as such, one of a rare breed. To boot, this guy was physically bigger than me in every way. He was also an up and coming young professional actor who already had some face in Hollywood. He came into Sandstone and immediately started Resisting this and that, and eventually got thrown into the Hole and then shipped out. He had been transferred to several prisons, and he expected that this was how he was going to be doing his time, just being transferred endlessly—on "The Ride." One day he looked at me—right through me, to be honest—and demanded to know, "Why aren't you Resisting in here?" I cannot even remember how I responded. More than likely with something like a mumbling err...well Vietnam isn't...or something lame. You might have expected that he'd guilt trip me about slavery and/or blacks in Vietnam but he didn't. Nonetheless, I still can recall how I felt—numb. What I didn't know is that he was pushing me further into a Shadow sector where I would discover several unhappy truths about my Captor story.

It's important for me to make clear to you that during the early years of Resistance I was not one to take pleasure in lambasting America or dumping on the Catholic Church. Temperamentally, I am an optimist and prefer celebration to denigration or agitation. To this point, my initial nonviolent Resistance was based on a hope that America would wake up to the idiocy of the war and that the Church would "strain every muscle," step out and act on Vatican Two's call to work towards ending war. I was a bit more of a reformer than a rebel. I slowly became a radical and it took meeting Gordy, the Marine, to turn me into a mad-ass draft board raider.

For most young activists, the Sixties was an era of re-learning American history. I entered college in 1963 and if asked what my Sunlight story was it would have included the historic breakthrough by Catholics from being second to first-class Americans as John F. Kennedy was elected president. As a country we were steeped in a Cold War, a bit behind the Russians in the space race, but committed to becoming Number One in the cosmos by putting a man on the moon. The Vietnam War was a nightly sidebar, and even the uproar over the Civil Rights movement only meant that America was making good on its Sunlight story's promise of equality for all and democracy for the world. Then everything started going haywire. It seemed like every week there was a "new history" about slavery and blacks, Chicanos, gays, women, the labor movement, etc. In tandem came an influx of critical works from outside America. Other countries began radically rewriting what I grew up thinking was a benevolent foreign policy. Marxist, Maoist, existentialist, "God is Dead," hippie, Yippie—the "America is the problem, not the solution!" tide just kept coming onto shore with bigger and bigger waves. Kaboom!

My point in retrospect is that I never stopped believing in the Sunlight story of the promise of America until I was deep into the pit of the penitentiary. No matter what you would have said to me, even to throwing back in my face that I was a criminal, would have moved me to write America off. It took America writing me off as "irrelevant and immaterial" to force me to consider that I did not know who or what America was. Nevertheless, although "irrelevant and immaterial" should have been a wake-up call, I wouldn't really hear it for another decade.

In this light, prior to prison, I was unaware of the history and actual extent of the criminal underworld and its subterranean global economy. I had no comprehension of crime as a way of life. I looked upon convicts as individuals who made a mistake, not as humans who lived in a Shadow world that was for all practical purposes invisible to me. Back then I looked upon prison as a noble institution whose goal was to put itself out of business, that is, to take errant people and put them onto the path of righteous living. Naïve? Possibly, but this was how I also initially understood the Selective Service system and the military-industrial complex, that is, as aberrations and not as truly anchoring or reflecting core American values. I held that we Americans were, in our cultural heart, peacemakers. Remember, it took Gordy's visit—"person not a gook"—to kick my butt across the line. My draft boards raids were a response to his challenge to "shut the System down."

My Sunlight story had pivoted on my core belief that given enough time America could and would solve any problem. I was even more certain that this was true for the Catholic Church. I heard "build the Earth" being ballyhooed at Vatican II and took this visionary phrase to clearly indicate that it was fitting that my religious faith find expression through my secular faith in America's glad story.

Now once Inside I had walked right smack into the heart of darkness, into my own personal and society's Shadow realm and learned right away that the mythic zone of subhumans was for real. I couldn't wish it away. More daunting, I had to decide what to do since it wasn't going to go away. In my body its Shadow story was being expressed as I experienced myself as subhuman, and as I did so I clearly saw the Sunlight story that had created this Shadow realm. Duh!—I discerned that prison as an institution was not going to put itself out of business, rather it was geared to keep itself in business, forever. It appeared that America's Sunlight story was a tale of endless warring both on the Inside and the Outside. I realized, for reasons not then clear to me, that America's Sunlight story was emotionally grounded in dreadful fear. Fear drove Outside America to seek global dominance through creating a military empire. In like manner, fear drove Inside Shadow America to seek intimate dominance through creating a subhuman empire of intimate enemies. As America had no intention of ending its warring so it had no intention of closing its prisons. As on Pathway #1 when I reflected on the meaning of endless warring so on Pathway #2 when I reflected on the meaning of endless imprisoning I was compelled to conclude that I was dealing with an institution and a Shadow story of mythic stature.

America's penitentiary

I got some further insights into and facts about how the mythic Shadow story of prisons arose while serving out my time on parole. In the mid 1970s, I directed a prison reform project in Northern California for the Quaker related American Friends Service Committee. I had numerous discussions with judges, wardens, psychiatric staff, case workers, and a few guards in a quest to get a simple answer to "What do you think prison achieves?" Not finding persuasive or substantial answers, this query sent me back to academia where I began to study the history of the penitentiary in America in a joint doctoral program at UC, Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union. I discovered that the "penitentiary" as a State run institution was a particular achievement of the same rebels who wrote the Declaration and Constitution. Initially, the penitentiary—as the word's religious roots and spiritual overtones of penance and penitent indicated—was a model of restorative justice. Its advocates modeled the penitentiary as a system of "mild punishments" with weekly moral counseling for each individual inmate. While this initial Revolutionary Era reform eventually failed, in the late 1820s, I realized that I could not understand the original vision of "America" without interpreting it as a vision of democracy based on restorative justice. Why had I never heard about this during all my years of higher education, even after reading all the "new histories"? No one had written about America's Inside as it was formed as an integral part of the Revolutionary nation's Sunlight story of Democracy.

What is significant at this point is that the Revolutionary Era penitentiary movement was spearheaded by religious leaders. More, that the way the penitentiary was to be run required that the inmate—having only a Bible to read—receive moral counseling through weekly visits from these religious leaders. However, they did not act as representatives of any specific Church related group but through a secular voluntary society, here, the still extant Pennsylvania Prison Society. All of a sudden I began to hear the story of origin of the penitentiary in the same way that I had heard inmate stories, that is, as part of a biblical conversation. What a discovery! Right from the start in America, the Sunlight story was written in tandem with the Shadow story. Unbelievable!—the formation of the new nation and its novel penitentiary system were applications of Outlaw Visions in that both formed in efforts to develop a Sunlight and a Shadow story. I had to chuckle—no visions professor I knew had a clue about this theological chapter in the formation of American visions.

To understand America's glad story of "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" required understanding its sad story. I certainly wasn't taught this chapter in American history, but prison history does have a tradition in academia. On the other hand, I found no awareness at all among the theological Union's faculty about the role of religion in the formation of the penitentiary system. More significantly for me, when I researched the role of religion in American society, no one used the rise of the penitentiary as an interpretive theological tool. Historically, and it is a continuing reality, the Inside was where theologians chose not to visit.

Biblical atheism

It was only when I encountered my Shadow Mother in prison that my Captor story's first principle was evident—"I am the lone male thy God thou shalt not have any females before me." This was an assertion of biblical atheism—a denial and obliteration of the Mother. With this realization everything I had thought about my Captor story got re-prioritized. The primary and main issue was not nonviolence, not Endless War, not even the denial of the value of Shadow experiences, rather it was all about Mother and the answer to, "Are we humans motherless children?"

I realized that the clear message of Genesis 1's "let us make man in our image" was that polytheism was the norm and that Abrahamic monotheism was an aberration, that is, a forced choice between gods and goddesses. If I chose the Abrahamic god then he would choose me—this was Abraham of Ur's option, and he chose the lone male who in turn chose him. Abraham's was a choice that implicitly stated, "We are motherless children!"

Here is the upside-down character of the Captor story, that it is a Shadow story that conveys what it means to be lost in the most forlorn and inhuman of the subhuman sector of the Shadow realm. My Captor story was not a glad story; it was the saddest of sad stories, one in which the vaunted Sunlight glad story was itself actually a Shadow sad story.

C. Outlaw theological discernments

Family stories

Being on trial made me painfully aware of my own family story. During the eight days when as attorney pro se I explained to judge and jury why I committed my crime of nonviolence, I could only be rightly understood if the jurors grasped the character of my family, my faith community, my ethnic identity, and my class background (expressed in terms of my access to higher education). At trial's end as I was sentenced I had a twice-bodied insight that baffled me because I was still in my one-bodied mind. I realized that my family was going to send me to prison! This was a curious revelation, clearly. But I realized that in my family story there was a belief in fairness, justice, and the moral obligation to take responsibility for one's actions. So my family heard the verdict and tacitly agreed, said, Take him away!

In the visiting room, I saw this same curious truth demonstrated by how families accepted their inmates' incarceration. The difference I discerned, however, was crucial to how I came to understand inmate sad stories. These families—unlike mine—were consciously twice-bodied. For example, many Afro-American families were aware that their inmate was captured committing a crime, tried by a jury, and lawfully sentenced. In that light, by accepting incarceration as did my family, they saw themselves as law-abiding Americans. Yet this was the era of the "Black Power" movement and they also knew that the System was racist, a form of modern slavery, fundamentally incapable of providing a black with a fair trial, run by white folk, and so forth. These families—again unlike mine—had "doing time" as a recurring theme through their generational family sad story.

I discerned that the family's sad story mediated the individual's personal sad story and exposed how it expressed the deeper cultural and mythic sad story. An inmate's family sad story was framed by historical facts, cultural values, and spiritual visions. This provided a major clue as to how to listen to a sad story, that is, to hear it as a family sad story first and as an individual inmate story second. Equally, it was a clue to understanding that the inmate's family sad story was an interpretive key for unlocking the Captor's sad story.

As I listened, it was not uncommon for an inmate to turn his sad story around and use it to tell me how screwed up my Captor family story was. "Don't say, you believe in justice? You must be a white-boy!"

In this light, Hagar's sad story, I hold, exposes more about the Hebrew Captor's sad story than it does about her own plight as a Captive Egyptian and sex slave. It reveals Sarah as Shadow Mother, consort of Abraham, Shadow Father. In like manner, I came to understand the sad story of my Captor class and my family even more deeply than I did those of other inmates.

I soon discerned that prison could have been part of my professional career path—I could have chosen employment as a Captor. In a way that I would never have realized if not enslaved, I came from the Captor class. My prison case manager, a former Catholic priest, was my alter ego and initially other inmates viewed me much like they did him. Tapping the educational and professional skills I shared with him, inmates sought my counsel and asked me to read letters from home and respond, write to the parole board, and discuss how, if ever, they could find community groups that would help them write a glad chapter in their life story. Fatefully, this opened the way, every day, to my hearing numerous inmate sad stories, making me acutely aware of my family's Captor story.

My twice-bodied consciousness then put me in an almost perverse situation. My group and my family had never told me a sad story, only our glad story as Captor. It was then that I awoke: I walked around as my own Captor! Eventually, this proved to be an unbearable burden of self-awareness. It became the straw that finally broke me, and near the end of my time Inside I slunk away from everyone and everything, bouncing a basketball as I started walking down my dark night's road.

Two biblical stories of origin

As I did Garden time, I wondered, What is it that I am hearing? Is this a family story? Is there misdirection? What is invisible? What is not being said? Is there a lie in its truth? What does She, my prison Mother, want me to experience and understand?

The most striking characteristic of the biblical tradition was its two quite different stories of origin. In Genesis 1, a seemingly polytheistic voice proclaimed, "Let us make man in our image." This was linked with an ostensibly quite clear statement about the simultaneous creation, and so implied equality, of the original humans, to wit, that "male and female created He them." So this creation account seemed to assert a primal equality between male and female and implied an "us," which did not rule out discerning the presence of a Mother goddess or goddesses. I mused, Was my prison Mother one of the "us"?

In the "us" and "created He them" account, there was nothing which the hearer was asked to imagine that he or she had not already pondered. The first audience to Chapter 1's narrative knew about or were practitioners of polytheistic religions. They were aware of the obvious facts of life, that it took a man and a woman to make a child. In brief, in Chapter 1, there was not much new in terms of facts or truths. What was visible seemed obvious and commonplace. Not so, however, with the second account.

In Chapter 2–3's Rib story, Adam was alone, talking with his god, who also was alone. There were no goddesses about. There were no women. When Adam felt his aloneness, his god formed a woman, Eve, from a rib that He excised from Adam when in a "deep sleep." The Rib account grounded ideas that were wildly imaginative. Almost every sentence and image begged the questions: What is not being said? What is invisible? Is this literal, symbolic, and/or mystical? This story began to baffle me as it activated my twice-bodied senses.

As I was aware of biblical research, notably the documentary hypothesis, I wondered why the biblical people heard two creation stories. Why did the tradition keep both, especially in light of how obviously different they were? Certainly, they weren't originally placed there to confuse people? A compelling question arose: Do these stories stand alone?

Others questions followed: Is it merely trivial that there are two stories? Or, were they meant to be heard together? Are they two parts of a greater whole? Do they somehow meld and form one grander family story? Is there a melded story that weaves visibly and invisibly through both stories? If so, how could I discern it?

I heard Chapter 1 to be a glad story. It was upbeat, poetic, inspiring, and appeared to give comfort to the hearer that all was well with the world because "God saw that it was good." It could easily be read literally. However, as in the visiting room, I realized that something was missing, namely the dark Shadow side of creation. Pain, suffering, death, and the like were not about. "Let us" was a Sunlight glad story through and through. It did not present the reader with even a hint of the existence of the Shadow realm or the Captor story.

In stark contrast, the Rib story instilled fear, dread, even horror into the mind and soul. It was a Shadow account about an enraged and wrathful, even vindictive Father god. Life on Earth was a profoundly sad story. "The Man" Yahweh was kicking human posteriors in and outside the Garden. It was a wildly imagined sad story. It could not be read literally as every aspect of the story seemed fantastic—a solitary human, no Mother goddess, a woman derived from a male rib, and so forth. More, this Garden of Eden was supposedly paradise. Was this an intentional act of misdirection? With twice-bodied senses: Was it a lie? For some reason, the biblical family needed to hear two stories of origin—I still was not exactly sure why.

In sum, I knew how scholars approached the text and I valued their insights, yet my twice-bodied senses indicated that something unusual was afoot with these two stories. I wondered, if the glad and sad, Captor and Captive stories were heard together with twice-bodied sensings, would a grander family story emerge?

Who was the biblical storyteller?

Scholars remain in disagreement about the most basic history and characteristics of the biblical family, Israel. For them, Genesis 1–3 was written by a family either of conquerors or peaceful infiltrators or peasant revolutionaries. For me, the significant characteristic was that the stories were set next to one another after a religious crisis that was grounded in the experience of exile.

_Exile_ : I listened with visiting room ears. Whoever they were or whenever they became consciously aware of themselves as "Israelites," this family knew defeat, subjection, humiliation, abuse, enslavement, and homelessness, among other suffered violences. They were war refugees, displaced people, and aliens. In prison, I heard sad stories from veterans, immigrants, migrants, homeless men, and Native people. All had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) memories. Often I'd hear wild, strange, and perplexing stories. The one constant in inmate sad stories, however, was that of the unrelenting violence inflicted upon the storyteller. Critically, what surfaced was the key interpretive point that inmate sad storytellers imagined a revenge story that had them inflicting unrelenting violence on those who had oppressed them. Simply, the oppressed sought to become the oppressor—the Captive, the Captor.

Prisoner sad stories often concluded by positing a glad story as beginning at that moment when revenge was exacted upon whoever was the perceived enemy. Most often it was another person—at times family members, although in general each con also wanted to find a way to strike back at The Man. The dynamic of note was that the prisoner consciously planned to "Do unto others as they done to me!" It was a cycle of violence that guaranteed that an inmate's sad story never ended.

Genesis 1–3, then, appeared as a two-part story of a family with collective traumatic memories of enslavement, brutalization, and exile.

_Key insight_ : Here, like Hagar, the Hebrew family listened with the slave's subhuman twice-bodied senses to the Rib story as the Captor's glad story. It was the story of origin brought back from exile, and it was placed next to the glad story of "let us" so that the Shadow and Sunlight chapters in the family's history would be forever remembered. Yet it was not remembrance in a passive sense, rather it was remembering so that something could be, would be realized in the present moment. The stories were there not simply to explain but as a spiritual challenge—"Awake!" The exiled family was challenged to move beyond its glad and sad story memory by melding them. They were challenged to relive their exiled Dark Night of the Soul and break through to a Sunlight vision of a grander family story.

These two stories of origin were necessary for the Hebrew family to cope with its traumatic experiences and memories. It seemed clear to me that these stories were therapeutic, that they were honored by the early Hebrews as stories that could lead to the healing of memories. Heard and interpreted as a melded story, a grander family vision of origin would emerge that would enable the family to break the cycle of violence and revenge that they knew only too well as twice-bodied slaves. In my terms, this grander vision would enable each to become a real human person.

In sum, the storyteller of Genesis 1–3 was a family conflicted about its origins, both consciously and subconsciously. The family needed the two creation stories to express the range and depth of its traumatic experiences. The Rib story was their Captor's glad story, and their own sad story.

Mythic families and Divine Couples: brooding the dark vapors

To find that emergent grander family story, I had to start with the Rib story since it stirred my Captor-Captive twice-bodied senses in a most passionate way. As a twice-bodied slave, the stark loneliness of the Garden startled me. It had an unsettling air of familiarity. The Rib account had me visualizing Adam locked down in solitary, in a particularly nasty black hole, jerkily pacing back and forth, moaning a soliloquy of a convict serving hard time.

Adam was a lone male, alone with his lone male god. This was like the single-parent home situation of many inmate sad stories. As most inmates came from marginal economic conditions, the single parent (most often a mother)—or even if there were two parents, all—worked multiple jobs. "Absent parents" was a common motif in inmate stories. Another was "State-raised convict," meaning in truth that they were parentless, brought up in a series of broken homes or foster homes—"parented" institutionally. Alone and lonely—prison had taken me there.

More significantly, the Garden mirrored the single-sex landscape of prison. Alone and lonely males: the literal, symbolic, and mystical insights this opened shocked me. I slapped myself upside my head, "No. That can't be!" The misdirection was becoming obvious: They—Adam and his god—are visibly alone so they must be invisibly a family. They are males alone so the women must be invisible. Visually, only one parent was present, the stern Father god—but mustn't there be a Mother goddess? She must be visibly "invisible"—not seen, hidden, fully present, but where?

I considered that most origin myths have male–female creating creatures—a Divine Couple, whether animal or spiritual. Was the Hebrew mythic Rib account an exception? Did this exception define the biblical tradition's singularity and distinctiveness? Was it unique? Or was the Rib account a story of misdirection? Even possibly a bold-faced lie?

Here, Chapter 1 reminded the Hebrews that their glad story was polytheistic and that the visual monotheism of the Rib account was a lie—the cruelest of lies, the lie of the Captor. The Rib story said, "You have no Mother! You are subhumans! Destined to be slaves, forever!" Chapter 1's "let us" proved useful as an interpretive foil to the Rib account's misdirection. The presence of many gods/goddesses was indicated by "us," and if the Rib story and "let us" were to be melded, the challenge was to find the Mother in the Rib account.

In many mythic stories, the goddess is often described using water symbology. Genesis 1:2 in the King James version reads, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." There was nothing apparently motherly or feminine in that account. In contrast the Living Bible's translation of this passage proved quite insightful. It read, "The earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors." The King James words— form, void, and darkness—evoke little emotion compared to the Living Bible's shapeless, chaotic, brooding, and dark vapors. There is primal movement: chaos. There is motherly brooding: an emotional, intense, heartfelt presence. There is the hint of elusiveness, even coyness: shapeless. So, where is She?...Brood with Her, follow the chaotic swirling, doesn't She now appear in watery outline, over there, present within the dark vapors, behind a misty veil, in a Shadowy part of the Garden?

The Garden Her, the biblical Mother Goddess, was indeed present in Her shapeless, chaotic, brooding self. Although not graphically visible in the narrative, She was present as She hid in the dark vapors—in the vapory mist, off to the side or behind the scene. She was present as She brooded: a hen upon her eggs. She who was co-creator and fully present during the Garden events.

The lone male's Mother goddess

There She was. The lone male's Mother goddess, hiding in the Garden's Shadow, "brooding over the dark vapors." I was dumbfounded and amazed. My prison Mother was revealing that She, Herself, was there in "let us" and that another Mother was brooding in the dark vapors. I was not to leave the Garden. This lone male Mother goddess was presenting Herself much like prison's Mother. Each presented the Dark Mother in one of Her multiple, varied, and numinous manifestations and presences.

Awake! Both prison and the Garden set before me the obvious fact to which my traditional theological education had blinded me—that is, to the necessary and universal principle of a male and female presence in a story of origin. If there was a Father god, there must be a Mother Goddess somewhere. If there was an Adam, in time the invisible Eve must appear—even if in such a wildly imagined way as from the male's Rib.

Despite what the biblical Captor's Rib origin story wanted to hide, when melded with "let us," to my twice-bodied heart, it revealed the Garden's Mother goddess. This is the message that the exiled Hebrews preserved. The whole Rib account was itself a masterpiece of misdirection about polytheism. As the Captor's story, the Shadow Rib tale tricked everyone into thinking that it was only about the lone male, with the revelation that there was only one god, the monotheistic, patriarchal, and angry Father.

When I initially went back into the Garden, with the aid of Trible's work, I had no idea that I would a) discern the presence of a Mother Goddess in Genesis 2-3 or b) come to realize the atheism of the biblical theological tradition. I resisted these insights as the lone male in me hung on tight. However with this insight into biblical atheism I began to understand how mine had been a lone male nonviolence—one seeking dominion; one with an Other as enemy. When my prison Mother appeared as one of the "let us" in Genesis 1, I was staggered. Had I lived all my life denying that I had a Mother? Had I myself been a biblical atheist? If so, why?

In summary, Chapter 1's "let us" when melded with the Rib story revealed a Divine Couple. In stark contrast to how the Augustinian theological tradition handled the material and interpreted these stories of origin, Genesis 1–3 is a thoroughly polytheistic story. Indeed, the traditional monotheistic interpretation of the Rib account when melded with Chapter 1's "let us" serves to underscore, in negative counter-point, the polytheism at the root of the biblical narrative. In this light, these two chapters when read with twice-bodied sensing unmask a lie.

The apparent absence of the Shadow Mother from Genesis was a visual trick and deception. A creation account (as the mythic story told by parents in a family) must have at least two divinities, male and female. Genesis 1–3, then, was a two-part story of origin with two goddesses, one inferred in Chapter 1's "let us" and the other's presence sensed as She brooded inside Chapter 2's Rib's dark vapors.

An emerging story of origin—"We humans have a Mother!"

With twice-bodied sensing, when I evaluated the Shadow Rib story and the Sunlight "let us" as visiting room stories, it seemed reasonable to infer that somehow the two were to explain, inspire, and together enable the listener to hear an emerging story of origin and discern its visionary message. Each was a part of a grander family story that would emerge from hearing the melded stories. Each story (one glad, one sad) was to stand on its own and its distinctiveness be understood through scholarly work, then the two were to be held in creative tension. In time, a visionary story did emerge, that of the Mother goddess of the Garden and the gods and goddess of "And it was good." I was absolutely thunderstruck.

If what I was discerning was true, it turned everything I had previously learned as a religious theologian upside down. The biblical tradition was polytheistic, not monotheistic. The Rib account was a mythically sad story. Both origin stories abounded with presences of a Mother goddess and goddesses. Genesis was clearly not simply and solely a lone male Father god's story.

The challenges that I now faced were several. With twice-bodied sensing, what else would listening to the melded stories disclose? What rich and heartfelt story of origin would emerge from melding the two biblical stories—glad and sad? Where would She—in Her many manifestations and presences—lead me?

In sum, as twice-bodied, I weighed the significance of their being two biblical stories of origin and discerned that Genesis 1 is a glad story and Genesis 2—3's "Adam's Rib" is a sad story. Genesis 2—3 reflects the experience of a people returned from exile, and I found their sad story to convey—as did Hagar's—the story of their Captors rather than being a story they believed. They were prisoners and slaves—war booty—and presented the Captor's story of origin as a narrative of lone males (both Adam and his god) as one to be meditated upon and held to balance the themes of the glad story.

Although the traditional Hebraic and Christian theological traditions have focused more heavily on the Rib account's sad story than Genesis 1's glad story and consequently developed a peculiar version of lone male patriarchal visions (e.g., Chosen People and Christus Victor), with twice-bodied sensing I discerned this as a furthering of the Captor's visions. This traditional lone male visions is aptly described as a revenge story. In this tradition, the oppressed triumph by becoming the oppressor.

Twice-bodied lie: the lone male body is the birthing body

What can be seen when one looks anew at the interpretively dominant Captor's Rib story (Chapter 2—3) with the "let us" story as a balancing interpretive tool (Chapter 1)?

What question's answer was it that there was only the lone male—that Adam lived without a woman as his god existed without a goddess? It appeared that there was a connection between the dominion over animals and plants and the fact that there was no female present up to this point. The connection linked—Question: Why are we here? Answer: To express dominion. Question: How are we to live? Answer: With women (the feminine) subordinated to men (lone maleness). Only through women accepting their invisibility could Adam's dominion become visible and manifest. The Rib story sets forth a family dynamic that answered a power relationship and spiritual relationship question. Question: Could a woman, the feminine, a female, ever make the divine present? Answer 1: Absolutely not. Answer 2: Absolutely yes, if she accepted enslavement.

Wildly, in a spectacular moment when the female appeared as a derivative of the male, it was revealed that her flesh and soul were formed using his bone. At this moment the Rib account asserted a one-bodied revelation—that the male body is the birthing body. In other mythic traditions creatures emerge from male bodies, but in the Rib story this was claimed as the only way all bodies, especially the female, came into existence. It was a wildly imagined fixation on lone maleness as the source of all, even mothering. When I sat with the almost numbing import of that fixation, I decided to put the term in capital letters as Lone Male because it described such a bizarre claim. One that was sourced in a deeply heartfelt mythic emotion engendered by the biblically roared answer "Yes!" to the question, "Are we humans motherless children?"

Lone Male describes a very twisted, truncated, and contorted sense of maleness where all creation is alleged to be created by or derived from the masculine presence—gods and men. Clearly, the Lone Male is an atheist in that he denies the existence of other gods and goddesses, notably his own Mother. Lone Male masculinity is stuck somewhere deep within the Shadow realm where sexual violence defines how males interact with one another. Notably, the first act of Lone Male sexual violence is to deny the Mother's existence and in doing so to deny that She has anything to do with birthing. As significant is the unstated—but quite obvious to twice-bodied sensing—claim that Her Goddess/ feminine ways cannot enable anyone to experience their full humanity. On this point, the Lone Male is an exile who believes that his fall from grace occurred when he listened to the feminine voice of Eve—and so to Her. He is a male constantly at war with Her and her, also with his Father god, and because of his fallen nature, with himself. The Lone Male has no Sunlight story. I was chilled: the Lone Male is a subhuman!...an inmate in the "where everything human is soon absent" sector of the Shadow realm.

As I was in prison, so here in the biblical Garden women were derivative beings and also subhumans. They were personally invisible—you looked around the Garden and they were not there! The question should be asked: How long was Eve present before Adam recognized her? Without a doubt She and her were in the Garden just as inmates were still fully present as persons although numbered and treated as subhumans.

I wondered, What sense of their bodies did men and women have when wildly imagining that the male body is the birthing body? How were men to feel embodied? Surely as Captors and dominators? More, didn't the importance of male genitalia now slip not so subtly into this story? Wasn't this the boldest of lies?

Like my prison Shadow Mother who kept me alive but watched me suffer, the Mother goddess of the Rib account—the Lone Male's Shadow Mother—kept Adam imprisoned in one-bodiedness. She and Her consort convinced their son that his body was the birthing body, and that all life-forms were his to dominate. They told him that his rib was a source of generative power. Wow! As I reflected more deeply upon the sexual violence that roots this imagery of the Rib account I became unnerved. I had heard it so often from prisoners' lips: "Slap the bitch!" And bitch was anyone, male or female that you could sexually dominate—ideally, sodomize. More, to survive, being sexually violent was how one "became a real man." Here in Genesis, the story of origin of The Man's Bitch was clear and evident to my twice-bodied self.

I was amazed. Adam's rib was simply a piece of literary misdirection—the "rib" was his penis. (I admit that I chuckled at this insight!) He learns that life comes from his penis, not from copulation with a woman. Sound quirky? Just recall that Adam's penis becomes his group's totem and presaged the identification of Hebrews through a circumcised phallus.

As with my prison Shadow Mother, about the Lone Male Mother goddess was an air of evil. In the existential moment when my prison Mother braced me and prevented me from suicide, I sensed Her evilness as I suffered. The Rib's Shadow Mother's evil was that She disembodied her daughter as She convinced Eve that she was a derivate being, born from a male and only having meaning insofar as she submitted to Lone Male dominion. Eve was Adam's sex slave as Hagar was subhumanly so to Abraham and Sarah.

Family story: abusive parents

When you step back and re-hear Genesis, it becomes clear that Her consort, the Shadow Father, colluded with this lie. On Her behalf, He verbally and physically treated their children abusively. He told them the lie that embodied Adam as a Lone Male Captor and Eve as a sex slave. Big Daddy was the Mother's mouthpiece.

As a family story, the Rib account began to reveal a parenting model. The Shadow Mother and Father were sexually violent abusive parents. As prison sad stories often conveyed, in situations of a father's abusive parenting, e.g., incest or sending sons off to kill, there was the complicit wife, mother, lover, or girlfriend. She let her man go do his dastardly deeds. She pleasured him on R&R to revive his killing instincts. She proudly accepted the body counts of the innocents. She enticed him with the rewards of hearth and home, and the promise that he would be celebrated as hero.

Biblical denial of sacred sexuality

"The male body is the birthing body"—to what question was this the answer? Question: Is sexuality a sacred act? Answer 1: No. Then with twice-bodied sensing—Answer 2: Yes.

"Is the Rib story really all about sacred sexuality?" When I first asked this out loud I was discombobulated. I knew that traditional Biblicists would claim that the question was wrong-headed and state that "Genesis is clearly not about sexuality. It is about man's relationship to God, a relationship based upon bestowed dominion." For me, the absence of overt and normal sexuality was the key to unlocking the veiled message of the Rib account, namely, that there never was and never will or could be anything like "sacred sexuality." Genesis revealed that the only way to be human was to be fully male. More, that the only way to be fully male, as Adam was, was to live without the female.

The Shadow Mother has appeared more visually and diversely in other patriarchal mythic creation stories. Her apparent absence—Her apparent obliteration!—in the Rib story and the revelation that human life was created and not born from a divine couple, was Her most mystical and mystifying act, with the collusion of Him. Hiding in the Garden's brooding vapors, She rejected honoring the creative power of intimate female sexual coupling with a male god. In this way, She enshrined and sanctioned Lone Male single-sex eroticism as She cloaked and concealed all female eroticism.

Nakedness and the apple: Twice-bodied intimate partners

Symbolically, eating the apple connoted an awakening within Adam and Eve of their natural erotic nature. Their eating initiated a relational and intimate moment. At this moment of awakening, Adam was shocked out of his one-bodied Lone Male vision of Eve. He saw and felt himself as intimate with Eve—they shared nakedness.

Adam tapped into a brooding emotion of deep erotic longing. He lusted after Eve and came to "know" her. They shared a deep erotic passion. Adam now had the knowledge of her which, up to this time, only his Lone Male god possessed. He now knew her as a fully present woman. She was no longer just his helper. For a brief moment he was not the dominating Lone Male. How they were present each to the other became qualitatively different. She was now the goddess with whom he could divinely co-create—begin a family. They shared a moment of sensual and poignant intimacy—nakedness. Adam would eventually express this fresh and novel passion for Eve when he called her "Mother of All."

Adam and Eve now moved towards one another as intimate, sexual partners. They were primed to do something which only the gods and goddesses were able to do—create life: "let us create." But I sensed more than that in this discovery of nakedness. It was Adam and Eve's nakedness that linked sexuality to holiness.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil gave them a twofold, twice-bodied insight. First, that they were not subhumans. They were not created out of dirt or derivative beings. They were not objects or alien creatures; not subhumans. Rather they were members of the family of gods and goddesses who conceived and birthed and declared, "Let us make...in our image." Second, that the gods and goddesses gave birth, as all divinities did, through acts of sacred sexuality. From within their erotic embrace, life—all wholeness and holiness—was made present. As children of these gods and goddesses, Adam and Eve also created through acts of sacred sexuality. The deeper truth was that through their intimate, sexual, genital embrace they made present the fullness of their humanness as they became one with the creator Mother and Father.

Adam and Eve discovered parenting as a mythic experience, one that enabled them to tap into the most primal and Gasp!ing emotion of orgasmic embrace. As they coupled and merged male with female they made themselves present as real human persons. They experienced this ecstatic relationship as a glad story. Eating the apple symbolized the vision of who they could become. However, this glad story never got told because Adam and Eve were promptly expelled before they conceived and began to live as family. The Garden, from this perspective, was an inhuman place, fitting for the Lone Male god and His Shadow consort but not for the human family.

For the human family to flourish, that is, for Adam and Eve to realize the vision of a fuller, deeper humanity, they had to leave the Lone Male god's paradise. For them to experience sacred sexuality and be intimately present each to the other, they had to make the Earth their home. Only during exile on Earth could they live in their recently discovered twice-bodiedness of sacred sexuality intimacy. At last, this odd and quirky Rib account took a normal turn in that the hearer learned that, indeed, humans did originally discover their full humanity through the sexually intimate embrace of a Mother and a Father.

This twice-bodied insight into their sacred sexual intimacy was why Adam and Eve were cursed. Mother Earth was cursed. Mother Eve was cursed. Intimate embrace, sexuality, and birthing from the female body were cursed. To keep its slaves under control, the Captor's Rib story must have Adam and Eve—as ostensible parents of the human race—accepting and living according to the revelation of Lone Male spirituality and revering the male body as the birthing body.

Summary

Inside experiences: Once Inside I was shocked by the biblical flavor of inmate conversations, especially sad stories. I was personally not speaking in Catholic biblical language although I was going through what I came to know upon hindsight were the depthless emotions of a personal mythic shift in my sense of body and self. My time Inside was the start of my Dark Night of the Soul journey. I was surviving but not really living in the sense of being emotionally grounded by either Shadow or Sunlight emotions. In 1983 I was rocked by hearing myself ask myself, "Why didn't you off yourself while in prison?" This was the initiatory kick in the ass from my Captive subhuman 8867-147 self to my Captor human Francis X. self. As I wrote I realized that I had been in the presence of a force that kept me alive but did not love or care for or want to nurture me. This was my Shadow Mother, and I hated Her. "Mother" did not relate to any specific tradition, not even to the works of the then groundbreaking feminist theologians. I simply felt Her presence. I did not know Her name.

I was a scholarly theologian but I had no tools from my training and teaching that enabled me to frame or interpret what was going on. I realized that my task (or challenge, even threat to my life) required that I take my one-body self as far down into the Shadow realm as I could. I committed myself to gutting it out, to experiencing the rawness of the amoral chaos within which subhumans survive (not live, merely survive). Since I had lost my mythic stories (American and Roman Catholic) I was personally eager to seek out a new mythic story. But I was at a loss as how to do that.

I knew enough about mythology and oral traditions and how doctrinal beliefs evolved over time to realize that an individual like me does not just sit down and write a mythic story. If I stayed solely within my head all I'd end up writing was a fantasy story, something like science fiction. Whether it was a moment of personal courage or just the last desperate howl as I threw myself forward while deep in the Shadow realm I cannot say but I simply realized that I had to go back to the mythic tradition in which I had been raised to see where, if I could, I had gone astray or misinterpreted it so that I ended up not proclaiming its Sunlight story but as the judge effectively showed me its Shadow story. Notably I went back steeped in the primal emotions of being a slave of the State and as such seeking to tap into the primal emotions of the biblical tradition which the judge, I realized, had experienced as he listened to me and then expressed as he was moved to expel me from society; cast me Inside.

I found Phyllis Trible's Texts of Terror and her use of "sad story" to be extremely valuable as I reflected on my time Inside. It enabled me to hear and value inmate sad stories. Although she didn't use the phrase it made me aware of the inmates' companion "glad story." As I entered Genesis I anticipated a quick read. Ha. My heart stopped me. I tapped into some primal emotions I had never experienced before when reading these stories. In short, I got stuck in Genesis 1-3 and its two stories of origin. Since Augustine of Hippo was the most influential theologian in my tradition I was especially detained in the Rib account. As I sat in the Garden, all of a sudden I began to hear these mythic stories of origins with my Inside ears as if hearing them in prison's visiting room. There I had sensed how much an inmate's personal story was but one chapter in the family's long-standing story. For many families their young men always ended up as Captives. Doing time was a consistent theme, for some with roots back in bondage as American slaves. In sharp contrast my family did not have a generational sad story that had "doing time" in it. Moreover, since I chose to enter prison, I was an atypical inmate, one for whom prison was a personal option and not a career stopover. Inmates tapped my educational skills to assist them in reading and writing letters and coaching them on how to handle their parole hearings. Consequently I heard an inordinate amount of sad stories.

As I recalled the inmates' biblically expressive and nuanced stories I came to grasp the mythic structure of prison. It is an institution where the Shadow and Sunlight realms abut. In biblical terms it was like the Garden of Eden, and "doing Garden time" became my frame of interpretive reference. I developed a twice-bodied methodology whose interpretive matrix included (1) inmate popular biblical renditions, (2) scholarly insights, (3) my personal sad story experience as it interacted with my own Captor's glad story, and (4) the guidance of my prison Mother. Also I came to appreciate the artful literary misdirection of inmate stories when they were talking with their families in the visiting room. In short, they lied, often. More, their families knew that they were lying and accepted it as what the inmate must do to survive Inside. This lying was often not publicly voiced or discussed, although in the visiting room there was always some family creating a row, even acting out in abusive ways. As such I returned to Genesis with wary Inside eyes, seeking like artful misdirection, even lies, in the structure of sad and glad stories.

Discoveries: Using this methodology I discerned the presence of a Shadow Mother in Genesis 2-3, the Rib account. Reflecting on the import of Her presence I realized that She revealed the existence of a biblical Divine Couple, here a Shadow Mother and Shadow Father. Emotionally Her presence made me confront and deeply experience what had always been a taboo theological revelation, that is, the truth that these were abusive parents. I realized that the Rib account was one of literary misdirection that forwarded several lies. Among them, 1) that there was no Mother Goddess whereas She is present as Shadow Mother—this lie being the basis for the theological tradition's biblical atheism. 2) That the male body is the birthing body—this, the lie at the base of the Rib account. 3) That there is no sacred sexuality that leads to spiritual insight and fulfillment—this the source for the lie that there is only Lone Male spirituality, one based upon exercising an enslaving Dominion.

The Tree of Knowledge enabled Adam and Eve to experience their twice-bodiedness. Subsequently, through an embrace of sacred sexuality they discovered themselves as creators of life. However this insight and experience threatened the Garden's Lone Male god and He cursed and exiled them. Upheaval and revolution—Furor! All this led me to conclude that the Rib account was a sad story which states that the biblical god and goddess are abusive parents. Ironically, the only way to become a real human person was for Adam and Eve to leave Paradise and live as exiles on the Earth. In this light, the Garden was the land of subhumans—a deeply dark sector of the Shadow realm on the biblical Inside.

Traditional Christian biblical visions states that humans are fallen but can be rescued and saved. This interpretation was sourced in the visions of Augustine of Hippo. With my twice-bodied sensing I termed this "Lone Male" visions. Lone Male describes a very twisted, truncated, and contorted sense of maleness where all creation is alleged to be created by or derived from the masculine presence—gods and men.

I found the Rib account to be a tale of misdirection that on the surface was solely about male actors. However when balanced with the "let us create man in our image" theme of Genesis 1 the Rib account is properly situated as the Captor story that the Hebrews heard when in exile. Unless it is a trivial fact that there are two stories of origins, I valued each story and realized that by meditating on each—Shadow sad and Sunlight glad story—a new mythic story of origin began to emerge. (This would lead to the Earthfolk vision of Pathway#3.)

I now had a quite robust Captive sad story of my own. As desired, it also brought clarity to my Captor story and why I was struggling with being the Captor of my Captive self.

I was an odd inmate, one who in effect chose to enter prison. In other times being a warden, guard, or counselor could have been my career path. I entered prison with a shattered Sunlight story but, nevertheless, I held onto its remnants for as long as I possibly could. Yet when I heard "irrelevant and immaterial" I could have said, if I had the concept at the time, "There goes my Captor story!" In prison I came to grasp my subhumanness and while doing so got a clearer perspective on my own human Captor story. I found myself as Captor of my Captive self. I survived through encountering the presence of a Shadow Mother, which experience made Her real—sensately real.

I read Genesis 2-3 as the Hebrew's Captor story, one whose values they did not affirm but whose memory they did not want to forget. They kept two stories of origin so that a novel mythic story and identity would emerge. Notably, my time Inside the Garden and the penitentiary made it clear that those who accept and affirm the traditional Christian biblical theological interpretation of the sad story of Original Sin and its biblical atheism (denial of the existence of a Mother Goddess) are doomed to remain subhuman Captives forever. This was especially true of secular folk who often fail to discern how their worldview is rooted in the biblical tradition, values, and primal emotions.

In prison I served in the Outside local community as a reading aide in Sandstone's elementary school. This "Right to Read" program meant that I would be working with the Hack's wives and children. This situation made the Hacks furious. I experienced an unusual amount of harassment for this voluntary work, including more eyeballs on my anus and wagging dick than I care to remember. This daily in-and-out changing of my identity from Captive to teacher rubbed my psyche raw and drew me close to getting stuck in the Shadow realm seething in hatred for the Hacks. I began to practice "living as if I am no one's enemy." Simply, I put myself in touch with a primal emotion of peacemaking, that is, I embraced myself as the enemy of myself as enemy. Then I had to not be the enemy of my enemy self. I had to live as if I weren't my own enemy.

On parole I directed a prison reform project and went back for doctoral studies that focused on the religious role in the rise of the penitentiary in Revolutionary Era America. This research clarified why the then quite innovative "penitentiary" model was adopted by the same men who were attending the Constitutional Convention. They originally created the new Democracy's penal system around what we would today call a restorative justice model. However, this enlightened model soon broke down due to the massive influx of immigrants. This work enabled me to finally understand the significance of the history of the penitentiary as telling an American sad story. I also learned that its roots were an integral part of America's foundational mythic Sunlight story of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

I asked myself, Had I lived all my life denying that I had a Mother? Had I myself been a biblical atheist? Here's where the presence of my prison Shadow Mother revealed to me that the most critical question was, Are we humans motherless children? Seemingly all topics eventually come to reference this question. A mythic story without a Mother is an absurdity as no one can defy (except by wishful, fantastical thinking) the obvious fact of life that a Father is father because a Mother is mother. So since the biblical West seeks to obliterate the Mother—any "memory of Her"—through its mainstream Augustinian interpretation of the Rib account, it follows that this theological tradition is rightly and accurately judged not only as atheistic but its seemingly glad story of rescue and salvation is properly assessed as in actuality the saddest of sad stories. Such a Motherless visions emotionally imprisons you in the deepest darkest sector of the Shadow realm where humans experience the most primal of emotions, that is, the death and loss, more the annihilation, of the Mother. Indeed, those who speak of themselves as "motherless children" have forgotten everything that is human. In this light, it is not surprising that the biblical tradition of exiled humans Endlessly Warring (against one another: Cain and Abel; against their Father god who exiles them from paradise) has mutated into America's secular tradition of Endless Warring, as described in "Vietnam Undeclared" on Pathway#1.

**Outlaw Visions** : My trial, unexpectedly, made me realize that my family was sending me to prison! In my family's story, which was a Captor glad story, the criminal justice system was fair and just, and after a trial you had to assume responsibility for your actions. My family had no history of another felonious Kroncke; no "sad story" of enslavement. However, in the visiting room I observed how, for example, Black families were aware of twice-bodied reality. They simultaneously knew that their inmate had committed a crime while also being aware that he was just the next generation of their young men captured by a criminal justice system that was fundamentally unfair and unjust.

I pondered, "Is the fact that there are two stories of biblical origin an insignificant piece of trivia or it is an insight laden fact?" Although I had read Genesis numerous times, now I read Chapter 1's "let us" as a glad story, and Chapter 2-3's Rib account as a sad story.

Genesis 1–3, then, appeared as a two-part story of a family with collective traumatic memories of enslavement, brutalization, and exile.

The Hebrew family listened with the slave's subhuman twice-bodied senses to the Rib story as the Captor's story. It was the story of origin brought back from exile, and it was placed next to the glad story of "let us" so that the Shadow and Sunlight chapters in the family's history would be forever remembered. Yet it was not remembrance in a passive sense, rather it was remembering so that something could be, would be realized in the present moment. The stories were there not simply to explain but as a spiritual challenge—"Awake!" The exiled family was challenged to move beyond its glad and sad story memory by melding them. They were challenged to relive their exiled Dark Night of the Soul and break through to a Sunlight vision of a grander family story.

These two stories of origin were necessary for the Hebrew family to cope with its traumatic experiences and memories. It seemed clear to me that these stories were therapeutic, that they were honored by the early Hebrews as stories that could lead to the healing of memories. Heard and interpreted as a melded story, a grander family vision of origin would emerge that would enable the family to break the cycle of violence and revenge that they knew only too well as twice-bodied slaves. In my terms, this grander vision would enable each to become a real human person.

In sum, the storyteller of Genesis 1–3 was a family conflicted about its origins, both consciously and subconsciously. The family needed the two creation stories to express the range and depth of its traumatic experiences. The Rib story was their Captor's glad story, and their own Captive sad story.

Biblical Genesis can be read as a statement that "There is no— and has never been any—sacred sexuality!" Although I discerned that a Shadow Mother was to be found "brooding in the dark vapors," the primary claim of the biblical tradition is "No! We have no Mother!" Rather, we humans are motherless children. Although it attempts to do so, the biblical theological tradition that emphasized the sad story of the Rib and denies the existence of a Mother Goddess simply cannot change a fundamental structure of nature and human reality, that is, that everyone has a mother, and if there is a male around, somewhere in the story the female is present, even if veiled.

Further theological discernments revealed a Lone Male vision that came to dominate early Abrahamic biblical visions. In it the "male body is the birthing body," there is no sacred sexuality and so no Divine Couple, and parenting is expressed through abusive actions, ending in kicking the kids out of the house and cursing them.

The theological challenge I faced was to meld the two stories, Captor and Captive, sad and glad, and meditatively open myself to the emergence of the vision that arises.
Chapter 9: Martin Luther King, Outlaw Theologian

In 2006 as I prepared to launch the Peace and War in the Heartland project on campuses that I had organized to promote the play written about the Minnesota 8, "Peace Crimes: the Minnesota 8 vs. the war," I re-read Martin Luther King's speeches with twice-bodied senses. There, I discerned an emerging outlaw theologian. King expressed his Captive sad story to the world as he fought for Civil Rights. At a critical juncture he began to protest against the Vietnam War and that forced him to begin to articulate the Captor glad story that he sensed was still keeping his people enslaved, that is, the Sunlight story of Endless War as "Making the world safe for democracy!" that needed (battle)field-hands to work for the military industrial complex.

In a backwards arcing parallel movement, our lives journeyed through two mythic realms and into Shadow captivities. King moved from exposing the mythic realm where black slaves were Captives to exposing the mythic realm of war-making where the Other as "gook" enemy must be captured or killed. Rhythmically, my life went from protesting war and its myth of Others as gooks to an experience of myself as a Captive slave. With an honest eye, I also realized that King failed, as I had, to stop the war and so obtain full release for his Captive brothers and sisters.

My journey was invigorated by a Catholic faith whose Vatican Council II presented a unifying visions through its vision of all individuals as People of God and which called me to create a world where war was internationally abolished. King's black Baptist faith had him first focused on the specific everyday needs of his people—to obtain Civil Rights—and ended with his urging the adoption of a unifying mythic vision of all people of all nations as One. Both of us were steeped in the biblical tradition but came to speak in nascent Outlaw Visions terms. King's concern was always about the plight of his Captive people who were being treated subhumanly. The redress he sought was not simply intellectual or moral, rather he demanded and effectively changed how the secular world operated—he amended the Law of the Land and so transformed institutions and individual attitudes. Characteristic of an outlaw theologian he embodied his quest, bearing savage blows upon his body and jangling chains around his legs. He meditated many nights Inside iron bars, a caged subhuman. The mighty Reverend preached in church but walked-the-walk through the Shadow streets of ghettoes, inner cities, and "For coloreds only" neighborhoods.

I was judged "irrelevant and immaterial" and set forth on a Dark Night's journey. Of greater tragic moment, King was murdered...I was not. Why? Despite other factors, because he was black and I was white. As they ambushed me the night of the Minnesota 8 draft raids, the FBI shouted, "Don't move or we'll shoot!" But they weren't killing white boys, just black boys. Of great significance to my developing Outlaw Visions was King's eloquently voiced premonition about his own death.

"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't really matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live—a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." ("I've been to the mountaintop.")

"I'm not fearing any man" resonated with my own Inside nonviolent practice of "living as if I am no one's enemy." As sensed subhumanly, I realized that King died in captivity, not as a freed-man. Of note, his wasn't a racial captivity or a Civil Rights prison. No, as he stated he'd been to the mountaintop. He had preached his Captive sad story, given his People a Sunlight vision of their humanity, all the while respecting their subhuman sufferings. Then he showed them that only nonviolently bearing their sufferings would deliver them to the Promised Land. My subhuman sense is that King had successfully marched through the mythic zone of black slavery and brought his People out of the Shadow realm, but that in so doing he got stuck there in a way he had never anticipated—not as a Civil Rights protester but as a Prisoner of War. I wager that King realized that he had set his People free only to watch them become Captors, themselves. What caused this unhappy ending?

A clue lies in the echo of resignation and failure borne by the quavering voice forecasting that "I may not get there with you." What was the "there"? King knew that his People would get there in terms of the Civil Right movement which had just about become unstoppable, so where was the there he would not reach? Or in other terms, why and who would want to kill him now that the Civil Rights battle was basically won? He certainly was no longer a threat to the racists because the Civil Rights act was the law of the land.

What many forget is that on April 4, 1967 King lost a great many followers and supporters as on that day he preached against the Vietnam War—not just white liberal supporters but black supporters. While Black Power and/or Black Muslim activists publicly disavowed him—mainly for his commitment to nonviolent action—many other blacks did not support his Poor Peoples Campaign which became a vehicle for resisting the Vietnam War. He linked ending the war with obtaining a final victory:

"We believe the highest patriotism demands the ending of the war and the opening of a bloodless war to final victory over racism and poverty." ("Beyond Vietnam—a time to break silence.")

One of the reasons I doubt that King was primarily murdered because of his Civil Rights work is that enabling blacks to become full citizens did not threaten the basic mythic foundation of America as did his increasingly ardent anti-war witness. Here certain historical strands come together to weave the outlines of this emerging story. While Civil Rights activists were conscious of being moved from one ghetto to another (off plantations to inner city ghettoes, or from ghettoes to prison cellblocks), they were not as aware of how important they were to another foundational pillar of American society, namely, the military industrial complex identified by President Eisenhower in his famous farewell address. Eisenhower noted that this new "industry" was a radical departure from America's traditional war story. In business terms, the military-industrial complex was an innovative start-up whose market success was an unintended consequence of mobilizing American industry and workers to fight a global war. Like the military draft which was not shut down after WWII ended—so breaking with historical precedent—so this new start-up enterprise was not demilitarized. Rather it was hyper-militarized, and rapidly expanded into every segment of the American workplace, including academia. This was a heady corporate business venture that needed personnel—an endless and assured stream of workers to support and enable its long-term business development plan of endless war-making.

President Truman effectively created its Personnel Department when he established the innovative peacetime draft—which ever remains a constitutionally questionable act. The Peacetime Draft delivered on "endless and assured." This innovative draft, notably, was matched by the newly christened Department of Defense (nee, Department of War). Where the draft office became the hiring office for the military's blue-collar workers, the DOD indirectly captured executive, senior management, and technological Research and Development talents through its aggressive funding of academic and professional research departments, laboratories, and think-tanks.

Just as for centuries Slave-America treated blacks as subhumans because it wanted cheap labor, so Vietnam War era blacks in the military were becoming aware of the military as a ghetto where they were America's (expendable) henchmen. As inmates often called prison an extension of the ghetto so black veterans began to speak of Vietnam as that, and as a plantation. Dissident black GIs and veterans spoke—as did King—about the cruel irony of people of color killing one another for a country where neither would be respected as fully human. "Niggers killing gooks."

It was a hard truth for many black activists to face but after WW II the military became the most accessible path to higher education and leadership training open to upwardly mobile blacks. Even being a "grunt" was a great "first job" for the high school drop-out or the chronically unemployed poor (or as a sentencing option to serving time Inside). So when King spoke out against the war, like the Minnesota 8, he was judged as striking at the foundation of government itself and threatening national security. Whereas Civil Rights required that King look into the Shadow past of America, into the sad story of Slave-America, the Vietnam War forced him to face the harsher truth that by becoming the muscle and blood of the military industry his People had not only not become free but had actually become their own Captor. They had moved from one plantation system to the other—still enslaved but now voluntarily so through enlistment. "Thank God almighty free at last!"—cruelly became a song of misdirection as now blacks became (battle)field-hands—the fodder, the acceptable collateral damage—of the God of war-making.

From a mythic perspective, it is certainly arguable that King personally experienced something like a Faustian Bargain. He was allowed to lead his People out of bondage as long as, in exchange, he remained as bondsman in the Shadow realm. All would go well, the Lone Male god said, if he accepted the chains of the God of war-making. This demanded that he limit his remarks to Civil Rights and not say such wild things like calling the Vietnam War "madness." But King did not live just by the laws of either Captor glad or Captive sad story, rather he broke all their boundaries and forged ahead as an outlaw theologian. He aggressively preached against the war...himself becoming "acceptable collateral damage."

Later on I will return to this theme and touch upon what I perceive to be King's sad story and the tensions that resulted from his merging of the Civil Rights with the anti-war movement. Right now, I want to underscore the fact that just before he was murdered his peacemaking visions was rapidly developing as he began to address the global significance of America's commitment to militarism. Even more, I want you to understand how King's insights enabled me to discern how everyone—you included—can experience their subhumanness.

Unearned suffering

Once the Captor and Captive stories of Outlaw Visions formed, I faced several related knotty questions. The core one was: How can others experience their twice-bodiedness and so embrace Outlaw Visions? Was what I was experiencing as I listened to the melded biblical stories with twice-bodied subhuman senses not communicable to humans? Was my experience of Mother in Her Shadow presences simply idiosyncratic? Or, on the contrary could someone intentionally perform a ritual that would inevitably plunk him/her down in the Shadow realm? Are mythic zones only accessible through social or institutional experiences such as going to war or being thrown into prison? Or, is there an intimate, personal way through which each and every individual person can find such access?

In brief, how could I find a practice that enabled others to passionately experience Genesis 1—3 as a melded sad story and glad story? This was daunting because it required enabling others to make themselves present through subhuman sensing—to discern their own sad story. It strained all my psychic and heartfelt muscle to maintain my own twice-bodiedness, so how could I enable others to vicariously enter prison's visiting room as they truly entered their own sad story? Certainly not everyone had to go to prison or be sexually enslaved as Hagar was?

I heard King's prophetic voice tinged with echoes of Hagar's subhuman voice as he pleaded on behalf of his twice-bodied brothers and sisters. He proclaimed in his "I have a dream" speech that,

"I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality."

Continuing, King then unveiled the insight into how to meld a sad story with a glad story and open oneself to discerning the emergent vision:

"You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive." (My emphasis.)

Here King spoke directly to my quandary. Everyone could experience their subhumanness by embracing their unearned suffering. America's blacks were chained in slavery and bound by racism simply because of who they were and not as a result of what they did. Here King's simple phrase "unearned suffering" shifted my perspective on my personal journey. It showed me a richer depth to my own sad story.

I realized that Trible and others were moved by Hagar because hers was an unearned suffering. She was captured simply because she was an enemy Egyptian. She was enslaved because Abraham's Captor story defined her as an enemy and by right of conquest as his war booty. As Hagar was Sarah and Abraham's sex slave, she was attacked with sexual violence through genital assaults. As a Lone Male Abraham wielded his phallic weapon and slew Her both physically while copulating with Hagar and mythically as he subdued Her by violating Hagar's intimacy, making both her and Her his "intimate enemy." Consider: Was Sarah as Shadow Mother bracing Hagar as Abraham sexually violated her?

The Rib story—a mythic story of unearned sufferings

_Intimate enemy._ This insight into intimacy (sexual and personal) as an attack zone all of a sudden gave me deeper insight into the relationship between Adam and Eve. It affirmed in my mind why the Garden story is all about sacred sexuality, that is, it negatively claims that there is no sacred sexuality. I understood now that Eve was Adam's intimate enemy. Her suffering—being lied to by her Divine Parents and told that she was created and not born from the embrace of love—was like Hagar's, one of unearned suffering. She was sexually abused simply because she was a woman whose body alone made manifest Her and her.

I pondered, Was the Rib story intentionally told as a story of misdirection and lies by a People who had suffered exile, and through their unearned sufferings awakened to twice-bodiedness?

Was the Rib story used in the way many ex-cons do who try to "scare straight" younger family members to keep them out of the System? Did the Rib story so powerfully present what the exiled people experienced and felt in their unearned sufferings because it wanted the hearer to rise up and shout, "Let's not live that way! That's not how our gods act! No one is a subhuman!"? In this vein, as a person opens themselves to be present to their unearned sufferings, could the Captor's Rib story, when melded with the "let us" account, truly endow them with twice-bodiedness? Could the Rib story assist everyone in experiencing what I experienced as a subhuman slave of the State?

Either the Rib story was not just wildly imagined but criminally insane in that it fostered abusive parenting and sexual violence or it must mean something else. Was it a story of unearned sufferings? Was the Rib story so extremely one-bodied that it could only be properly interpreted by such a twice-bodied insight? Was it the saddest of sad stories given that Adam and Eve's sufferings were unearned at every turn? They were lied to, deceived, cursed, and banished by their parents. Of all sufferings, wasn't this the prime example of unearned sufferings? To be treated as a subhuman by those who birthed you and who should care for your body and soul forever?

An Outlaw Visions insight: The Rib story is a mythic story of unearned sufferings. As I settled back into the remembered presence of prison's visiting room, it seemed evident that the biblical family remembering the Rib story wanted to ensure that the deeply sad story about their unearned suffering during exile was forever heard. The Rib account was a story about the exiled Hebrew experience told and re-told to provide insight into the mythic Captor's story. In like manner did Hagar's story reveal more about Sarah as Captor than about Hagar herself as Captive. It seemed clear that the Rib story was revered because it exposed the Captor glad story which those returning from exile wanted their People to never forget. Not this well: If heard by itself the Rib account (mis)directs the hearer away from its intended and original message which is a rejection of the Captor's Lone Male cycle of revenge and endless sexual violence.

Slave-America

Martin Luther King rejected this Captor Lone Male cycle of revenge and endless violence. He preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Sunday and then lived out his visions on the streets every day, notably lifting up the poor and oppressed of every ethnicity. For me King's heartfelt actions and unearned sufferings make him an exemplar of Outlaw Visions.

King's life and that of his people—former slaves—should be told as a sad story, that is, as historical events with proper mythic interpretations. He represented a distinct People whose origin was formed by an act of captivity, primarily justified by and sourced in biblical and Christian faith and values. The removal of black Africans by slave traders (many sellers and even some slave owners being themselves black Africans) took place in a mythic zone of captivity. As happened when I entered the Inside and was digitized, so were most slaves branded as subhumans.

"...the gang on each [coffle] chain is in succession marched close to a fire previously kindled on the beach. Here marking-irons are heated, and when an iron is sufficiently hot, it is quickly dipped in palm-oil, in order to prevent its sticking to the flesh. It is then applied to the ribs or hip, and sometimes even to the breast. Each slave-dealer uses his own mark, so that when the vessel arrives at her destination, it is easily ascertained to whom those who died belonged." (Travels in Western Africa in 1845 & 1846 [London, 1847; reprinted London, 1968], vol. I, p. 143)

These subhumans were cast into bondage and sold as property. They were cast into the darkest sector of the Shadow realm where surviving replaces living. The holes of the slave ships on the Middle Passage carried potentially profitable cargo but as a sector of the Shadow realm there was little concern for human needs.

As Inside is a realm of anal activities (inspections and nightly delights) there is an account that visually and viscerally suggests the connection between the Shadow realm of prisons and slave ships. The story relates how a British captain conned a Jewish buyer into accepting sick slaves who were suffering from the flu. Knowing that the slaves were suffering from constant diarrhea the captain had a surgeon block up each slave's anus with oakum (old rope fibers), so that they would not appear sick in any way. This Shadow chapter in America's mythic story ("All men are created equal"!) is as rarely taught as is that of the rise of the penitentiary system in America. Both are Inside Shadow stories that King's People knew well.

What was the prevalent biblical visions that justified slavery? Howell Cobb, a distinguished and powerful southern Democrat Congressman, who was also a co-founder of the Confederate States of America, penned "A scriptural examination of the institution of slavery in the United States; with its objects and purposes"(1850). He published it

"...to show the purposes for which African slavery was instituted, in so far as the United States stand connected with it. There are two propositions of essential importance, and which never must be lost sight of, in the investigation of this subject, to wit:

1.African slavery is a punishment, inflicted upon the enslaved, for their wickedness.

2.Slavery, as it exists in the United States, is the Providentially-arranged means whereby Africa is to be lifted from her deep degradation, to a state of civil and religious liberty."

These two propositions anchor Cobb's Captor Story. The slaves Captive Story is that they are deeply degraded and must be lifted up—once again the Lone Male notion of having to be saved. Of course, the Savior here is the Slave Master, notably white male and American.

African slaves were treated as subhumans whose sentence was basically a death penalty. There was no parole, forgiveness, or redemption. They were destined to live and die as subhumans. Since they were twice-bodied but forever chained down as subhumans in the Shadow sector, they could harbor little hope that they would someday be able to become humans again. Everything human was soon absent and denied—their social structure, culture, religious beliefs, family bonds, language, etc. Their bondage took place in one of the remotest corners of the Shadow realm where they formed a separate nation of subhumans—Slave-America.

Slave-America as a nation of subhumans is a perspective on America's Shadow history that is still either denied or glossed over. Despite occasional "Christian acts of mercy" by anomalous slaveholders, these slaves were eternal Captives, able to be passed down in wills to future generations. They did not exist in normal society's time and space. They were Inside and their humanity was invisible to State and Church rulers and the average citizen. They were chased down if they sought freedom. They were often hunted and killed for sport. The importance of this perspective on Slave-America is that the Sunlight story of "We, the People" was believable only if Slave-America remained invisible. I see those darkies, but then I don't. _Ha. Ha_.

What does it mean that when Slave-America was officially abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation, black Americans continued to live in the Shadow realm? Was this a trick of the Captor—the Proclamation as an act of misdirection? Was slavery abolished but no slaves actually released from captivity? Were blacks now like Hagar, experiencing the mythic zone at the intimate level—politically free but still subhuman as the intimate enemy? Their chains and manacles were ones of polite Captor society—small signs that said "For Whites Only" at water fountains, hotel doors, and toilets. King's voice rang out proclaiming that a black person's "long night of captivity" continued as he/she remained an "exile in his own land."

"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition." ("I have a dream speech." 1963)

And he added, "We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one."

King's Outlaw Visions responded to issues of the streets, was expressed through actions in the public space of the governing city, and sought changes in secular—not mainly religious—laws, practices, and customs.

"This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day." ("Dream.")

King challenged his People to get out of the Shadow realm and move towards the Sunlight. "Let us not wallow in the valley of despair," and "Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice."

As noted above, King's revolutionary charge was to embrace nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience and bear one's "unearned suffering."

"You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive." ("Dream.")

King urged them to avoid the trap of the Captive becoming the Captor by not embracing the tools of oppression, namely, violence. More, he called them to tell a new mythic story, where all people—Captors and Captives—affirmed that everyone is One in that "We cannot walk alone." Not just should not but cannot—meaning that moving forward into the Sunlight required an affirmation of the dignity of whites, blacks, and all humans. Here King could just as well have said, as Gordy did, "It wasn't a gook. It was a person."

"But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone." ("Dream.")

King's glad story was not sugar-coated.

"Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it means being frustrated. When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that you will walk the streets with a burdened heart. Sometimes it means losing a job...means being abused and scorned. It may mean having a seven, eight year old child asking a daddy, "Why do you have to go to jail so much?" And I've long since learned that to be a follower to Jesus Christ means taking up the cross. And my bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear." ("Why I am opposed to the War in Vietnam.")

King grasped, in my phrasing, that nonviolence is a way of dealing with one's personal violence. Nonviolent practice is not the avoidance of violence rather it directly confronts and seeks to transform violence. Violence is a Shadow realm experience—and creatively working with violence to create a Sunlight glad story is what nonviolent direct action seeks to achieve.

"Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition." ("Beyond Vietnam.")

And, "We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation."

King's nightmare

As previously mentioned, I stated in my closing argument to the jurors—just after reading my father's war time letters—that his WWII sacrifice was greatly in vain because America never ceased warring. My generation had not inherited peace from his. This led me to reflect upon the character of war-making as a social ritual that I later developed in "Vietnam Undeclared"—on Pathway#1. However, at the end of my trial I was still so one-bodied that I failed to see the Shadow side of America—I had barely a notion then that there was even a Shadow side. This is a significant insight into the times, namely, that most white protesters were middle-class and had no intellectual or emotional framework to use to discern our own sad story. Consequently, we could not and did not sense the mythic character and consequence of America's commitment to endless war-making. This despite the clear economic fact that this war commitment fundamentally restructured the nation's economic system, replacing Free Market mechanisms with those required to sustain the military-industrial complex. From this perspective, this war commitment consigned America to being a People permanently stuck in a remote and deeply dark sector of the Shadow realm. Understand this point: In this remote Shadow sector there is no and has never been a spar of Sunlight—the American People have never been at peace and have long remained prisoners of the war-making Lone Male mythic Shadow Mothers and Shadow Fathers.

King began to deal with similar Shadow issues as he was moved to speak about the clear interrelationship between racism and the Vietnam War. While those of us in the anti-war movement were encouraged after King merged the two movements, we were distressed as many black supporters and white followers abandoned him. They were unsettled by his calling America's involvement in the war "madness." He further stated that "I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken." (My italics.) As I came to present in "Vietnam Undeclared," King was just beginning to spy the mythic character of the war and its functioning as a social ritual. He stated that "The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit."

As I read King, once he linked Slave-America with militarized America his words become edged with a tone of despair.

"A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." ("Beyond Vietnam")

As with me and so many who affirmed King's commitment to nonviolence, we had no way of measuring the depth and breadth of America's Shadow realm. When we entered it, each following our own sad story, we saw just one sector. White radicals visited the war sector. Black radicals lived in racism's sector. Women were besieged, warily watching male oppression arise at every turn. And then it spread out: Latinos, Native Peoples, gays...and the poor, poor, forever poor. King, I intuit, eventually entered on a Dark Night's journey which was nothing short of a personal nightmare—"I may not get there with you." In this there is an echo of Trible's lament about "wrestling with the silence, absence and opposition of God."

King's nightmare caused him to up the ante as his call was now directed at all humans, urging them to express an unconditional love for every other human: Other, alien, enemy, outlaw, outcast. In this instance his evolving Outlaw Visions surfaced in that his call for nonviolent action was no longer limited to just American blacks or Americans in general but to the citizens of the world. He called for global action.

"This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind...I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response...which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality....We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action...If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response... The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history." ("Beyond Vietnam.")

King's failure

Is it fair for me to say that King failed? Not in terms of securing Civil Rights but in terms of curing America's madness—its commitment to militarism?

We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are bothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State—they are God-given.

"Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality....It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America." ("Why I am opposed.")

Hearing King's voice from beyond the grave I have to ask again: _Is it possible that King was murdered because of his exposure of America's Shadow militarism more than for his exposure of racial injustice?_

My Outlaw Visions developed as I confronted the paralyzing horror that I was my own Captor. As I read between the lines of King's speeches, I sensed that he came to a like realization at the moment he linked racism and the war. Once the Armed Service was desegregated under Eisenhower, the military became a hot career option for upwardly mobile blacks. Was the military just another ghetto (economic and cultural)? "Military service" but a warmed-over, whitewashed Slave America version of the Middle Passage? Is this what King's anti-war warnings was exposing? And could it be the main reason that many black leaders and activists abandoned him?

King was slain, I hold, because his Outlaw Visions was summoning forth a new mythic story of human origin. He believed that,

"Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the Earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home!"

In King's proclamation of "Out of one blood" I heard an echo of Gordy's "It wasn't a gook. It was a person." His "God made all men" echoed Vatican Council II's "People of God." His calling "Earth" a "home" echoed Gordy's "It wasn't a hootch. It was a home." At this point King began to deviate from mainstream Lone Male biblical myth and visions which held that the Earth was a zone of fallen souls and heaven the only home. His one blood denied the Chosen People their exclusive place, and the God who treated humans marvelously was possibly the god of Genesis 1 ("It was very good.") but certainly not the raging, abusive Lone Male Father god of the Rib account.

I read King as a nascent Outlaw Theologian. He was rapidly moving towards the articulation of a global vision to counter what he realized was the newly emerging worldwide force that reveled in the madness of Vietnam. He judged this madness to be in violation of the basic moral tenets of the biblical and Christian traditions. It is fair to say that King sensed the emergence of the transforming force which we term globalization. I don't doubt that King plundered every biblical text he could find to wring out of it a message of nonviolence and peacemaking. However, since he remained a biblical person, and so his implicitly answered "Yes!" to our mythic motherless condition, he was consigned him—despite his nascent Captive sad story—to never move beyond his Lone Male Captor glad story.

Summary

After prison as I gained clarity on my own Shadow/Sunlight stories and started writing my Outlaw Visions I was more than a bit stymied by trying to answer: How do I or could I or should I motivate and enable you to enter the Shadow realm and encounter your subhumanness? Since my Outlaw Visions message to one-body you was that it is urgently necessary that you move into the Shadow realm and experience your subhuman self in order to move into the Sunlight and develop yourself as a real human person, I was inspired when I came across Martin Luther King's valuing of "unearned sufferings." He spoke about unearned sufferings in his famous "I have a dream speech." King's notion of "unearned sufferings" provided insight and a practical method. Simply, everyone can enter a personal Shadow realm because everyone has "unearned sufferings." For example, unearned sufferings arise from being discriminated against simply because you were born female or gay or American.

Further exploration of Martin Luther King's speeches moved me to see him as developing an implicit Outlaw Visions. His articulation of a Captive sad story is quite evident upon a first reading. However, in time, he developed a Captor glad story as he discerned that his People had become their own Captors. This occurred when he grasped the deep cultural and moral connections between the Civil Rights and the anti-war movements. I allege that it is reasonable to argue that King was slain because his expanded vision and actions threatened the military-industrial-academic complex. Many of his followers—black and white—abandoned him when he became a critic of America's military "madness." Although King did not live to explicitly develop an Outlaw Visions, his life, actions and vision remain an inspirational source.

In the tradition of King, Outlaw Visions is grounded in secular (not church) realities because it focuses on the daily world and experiences of society's underclass and the criminal underworld as well as the daily world and experiences of society's ruling powers. It describes the criminal underclass's Captive sad story and the Captor glad story of the ruling powers.

Summary of Pathway#2

Outlaw Visions was seeded the moment I, as the Adjustment Committee intended, started "doing time" and entered the mythic zone of the Inside. There I began to serve out a calendar based sentence while existing as a Shadow subhuman to whom time was meaningless. Soon, I was blown away by two moments of self discovery: as a Captive but more so as a Captor. While in prison I had no way to interpret my experiences as I had lost my Catholic and American frames of reference. So my mind was, in a sense, a tabula rasa, a blank slate. This lack of mental clutter enabled me to listen to inmate stories, and so my outlaw theological language and imagery began to form.

I learned that there is a Shadow "Inside" world as real as the Sunlight Outside "Free World." This Inside realm is a mythic zone, that is, a place where an individual experiences the deepest emotions that unite and bind a People together. In prison I experienced the depths of several mythic biblical stories, e.g., Cain and Abel, Hagar and Sarah, Adam and Eve. In doing so I came to grasp that how the Sunlight world functions (politically, economically, legally, etc.) only makes sense when you grasp its mythic and theological Shadow characteristics.

I entered prison in an unusual manner. First, I chose to go—I consciously committed a crime that I intended to admit publicly to gain legitimacy as an anti-war speaker and activist. Second, I entered as an "irrelevant and immaterial" loser. I had lost my Catholic and American story as both had failed to convey the heart of my Resistance and move others to imitate my civil disobedience. However, after a brief Inside "honeymoon" I realized that, being a white-male intellectual, I was not supposed to be an inmate, rather I should have been a warden or case worker. Baffled, I experienced myself as Captor of myself as Captive. Within a short period of time Inside, I "adjusted" and became a prisoner in body, mind and soul—as I experienced myself as a subhuman. I experienced a qualitative shift in my sense of self—I became The Man's Bitch. To sort all this out, during the decades after prison, I developed both a Captor glad story and a Captive sad story.

As I listened to inmate stories more seeds were planted for the flowering of Outlaw Visions. To interpret these stories as well as my own, I used Phyllis Trible's notion of a "sad story." She was a seminal feminist Old Testament scholar. She applied "sad story" to interpret the biblical "texts of terror" that tell the "tales of terror with women as victims." She used sad story to interpret the lives and sufferings of victimized and terrorized women of today. I differed from Trible in that I not only heard inmate sad stories but I had my own. Consequently, I experienced myself as twice-bodied—both as human Francis X. and as subhuman 8867-147.

**The Rung stories are my "texts of terror."** They describe experiences that take you down into the Inside's Shadow realm to ultimately end in the most forlorn sector of darkness "where everything human is soon absent." The Shadow realm has many sectors, including the three Rungs which take you into the first level of Organized Crime, gangs, and other ad hoc groupings that inmates join for protection. The second is a sector where cruelty and pain thrive at the borders of the bureaucracy's "standard operating procedure." The third is the "soon absent" sector where darkness is so thick that it obscures one's individuality, muffles one's personal presence. All "soon absent" experiences and actions are yours as you become truly mythic as you become One with all subhumans.

Right from my first inmate coffee-break conversation the one thing that shocked me most was the biblical character and language used by street-hardened criminals. Their Inside visions employed a battery of traditional religious terms and images but translated and interpreted them using the lingo of life on the streets, mainly urban, inner city, and poor streets. A decade after my release, inspired by these inmates stories I went back to explore Genesis. At the start I was only seeking to clarify why I had failed to understand or how I had misinterpreted the biblical tradition. I knew that my nonviolence was an offense to both secular and canon law—as evidenced by the condemnations of my civil judge and religious magistrate, the local archbishop. To my astonishment, with twice-bodied sensings I discerned the presence of a Shadow Mother as the divine consort of the creator Father god of the biblical tradition.

Although I had no interest in reforming the biblical tradition, I realized that with twice-bodied ears and eyes I gained an unusual insight into the hows and whys of the orthodox, mainstream Hebrew-Christian interpretations developed over the millennia. The influence of Augustine of Hippo was pivotal for the eventual dominance of a Captor glad story which developed as an interpretation of the Rib account. Augustine laid the basis for the triumph of a set of values which I termed the Lone Male vision and morality that continues to source both the major Christian worldview and that of the West's secular vision. These include: 1) denial of the existence of a Mother Goddess, 2) dismissal of the spiritual usefulness of feminine ways and powers, 3) positioning the human race as God's enemy, worthy of being cursed and exiled, and 4) a belief that humans must be saved, that they cannot find fulfillment or grace or forgiveness or Oneness as a result of their own efforts.

In the main, Augustine solidified a bedrock biblical belief that still pervades contemporary biblical thought and practice (and so also secular thought and practice), that is, that the Shadow realm is to be avoided, feared, even denied. I discerned why. In the biblical tradition the Mother goddess was imprisoned in a deep and dark sector of the Shadow realm—so deep and dark that She was invisible to Adam and Eve's eyes. From this I realized that the only way to encounter Her in Her many manifestations was through Shadow experiences. Today, the West's secular tradition continues this Lone Male denial of Her and of the value of feminine visions, ways and arts.

What freed me to personally jettison the biblical tradition (and the West's secular tradition) was the primal emotional experience of realizing that prison is all about intimacy. The counsel to "Do your own time" and the absolute loss of privacy were just two Inside experiences that exposed the fact that intimacy was itself a mythic zone. This insight into intimacy was also evidenced in the biblical origin stories. In them, notably in the Rib account, the primary intimacy revelation is a negative one, that is, it is claimed that there is no "sacred sexuality" because there are no Divine Parents (Father and Mother consorts). Consequently, humans are mythically motherless children.

From this revelation the Lone Male vision of dominion and global domination was derived. I claim that this Lone Male mythic story is atheistic in that it denies the existence of a Mother. Without a Mother there can be no intimacy because humans are not born, rather they are created out of nothing ("creatio ex nihilo"). In this light, I assessed the Rib as the saddest of sad stories. It became evident to me that what the Rib denied was what it actually revealed—and that this insight was the necessary starting point for my developing a new mythic story. I must start with my experience of Mother and honoring of feminine ways. Only this can serve as the inspirational source for envisioning a fresh mythic story that values intimacy as the zone for discovering oneself as a real human person.

After prison I sought an answer to, "How do I or could I or should I motivate and enable you to enter the Shadow realm and encounter your subhumanness?" The answer was necessary if you were to develop yourself as a real human person. At the time, I came across Martin Luther King's valuing of "unearned sufferings" which was a key point in his famous "I have a dream speech." Since everyone has "unearned sufferings" it is possible for everyone to enter their own personal Shadow realm. Unearned sufferings arise, for example, when you are wronged or abused for who you are, not what you did.

I found King to be a nascent outlaw theologian. He drew the world's awareness to the Captive sad story of American blacks. In time, as I read him, he also developed a Captor glad story as he discerned that his People had become their own Captors. This occurred when he grasped the deep cultural and moral connections between the Civil Rights and the anti-war movements. From this perspective, I hold that King was slain because his expanded vision and actions threatened the military-industrial-academic complex. When he called Vietnam "madness" he was abandoned him by many Civil Rights activists, black and white. King's life, actions and vision remain an inspirational source for developing Outlaw Visions.

In the tradition of King, Outlaw Visions is grounded in secular (not church) realities because it focuses on the daily world and experiences of society's underclass and the criminal underworld as well as the daily world and experiences of society's ruling powers. It describes the criminal underclass's Captive sad story and the Captor glad story of the ruling powers.

Finally, Outlaw Visions is outside the laws of both Captor glad story and Captive sad story. I chose not to remain either a Captor or a Captive. Using the twice-bodied methodology, I was prepared to listen to my Captor and Captive theologies, hold them in meditative tension, and undergo a revolutionary experience that could open me to an exciting vision of how to dwell peacefully and comfortably at home on the living Earth. I was ready to walk down Pathway#3.

Pathway #3: Earthfolk

Q: _How did I become an Earthfolk?_

A _: By listening to today's war veterans and student protesters—my activist grandchildren._

A _: By embodying my answer to, "Yes! We have a Mother!"_
Chapter 10: Four Shadow stories

After the play "Peace Crimes: the Minnesota 8 vs. the war" had finished its run in early 2008, my Outlaw Visions began to rapidly gel as I reflected upon the insights gained through my Shadow Mother encounter in prison. As explained below, for several years I had daily and deep conversations with young activists who were part of the "Peace and War in the Heartland" (PWH) project that promoted the play. Hearing me out, they then called upon me to enable them to experience Gordy, the Marine's "It wasn't a gook, it was a person." They wanted to explore their own Inside Shadow realm and be present to themselves as gooks. At the time, I could only suggest that they practice "living as if I am no one's enemy." This required that they intentionally approach an Other with an openness to not accept his fear by not returning it with their own fear. This was all that I had to give them at the time. Oddly, the most daunting challenge articulated by the young activists was one that no one specifically stated but which being with them evoked. I had not yet written the Rung stories and I felt their challenging demand, "Write them!" They wanted more. So I retired to a small southwestern Wisconsin town to work on my Shadow and the Earthfolk vision.

Although it was tough to do, I realized that my daily meditating upon my Inside time and the Rung stories—descending into the Shadow realm, especially into the "soon absent" sector—empowered me and was a source that gave rise to deeper insights into the Earthfolk vision. I found that only by touching my subhuman self, every day, could I manifest and make myself present as precious and beloved. After numerous meditations using the Rung stories, I paused to re-examine my pre-prison life and discern how the Shadow had informed my growth. Of course my pre-prison, one-body self had held a very shallow notion of Shadow. As expected, back then I was a Lone Male and as such denied that the Shadow had any valuable lessons for personal growth. I grew up hearing that the best way to deal with grief, sorrow, and loss was simply to "Stuff it!" Real men don't cry.

As I looked back— _Awake!_ —I spied the presence of my Shadow Mother in my life before prison. I began to write about two such experiences that had taken me down, way back in my youth, into the "soon absent" sector of the Shadow realm. The first story was about my younger brother, Joseph, the last of nine children. It describes his long-suffering death, that lasted nine years, and which simply left me stunned and abandoned in the Shadow realm. Although I slowly died with him, at the time I had no way of discerning the benefits of our Shadowy relationship. The second, about a neighborhood bully, Quinn, was possibly the most amazing to me because I entombed it in my psyche for near fifty years. However as I relived it I realized that I was only able to touch this Shadow event because of a woman lover who had suffered in deeper Shadow sectors. She listened and enabled me to understand the necessity of embracing a beloved as the way of moving from the "soon absent" Shadow sector into the Sunlight. The next two stories described post-prison experiences which, however, were sources for my gaining insight into the pre-prison experiences. The story about my youngest son, Nicholas, resonated with the one about my brother but it astounded me as it made me aware that it was with Nicholas (in 1985) that I had first encountered myself as Shadow Mother. It was just three years after this realization that I published my first essay about the Inside, "Prison, Bottoming Out, Mother." These experiences, in their own subliminal ways, had prepared me to enter and understand prison's Shadow realm and descend its rungs. The fourth described how the first three enabled me to properly interpret my experiences on campuses when I was promoting the play. It is the story of John Lennon's song "Imagine" and my experiences with college students and other young activists during 2006-2008. Collectively, these four stories provided insights into how and why I discerned and discovered the Earthfolk vision.

These four stories have a Shadow connection which is at times direct but more often is quite subterranean. The connection between the first story about the death of my youngest brother, Joseph, and the second about my youngest son, Nicholas, is one of "unearned suffering." Joey suffered a debilitating illness and Nick an accidental blow to the head—random, unintentional Shadow events. Such came twice to teach me a lesson about the fragility of life and the truth that dying should only be a natural process and not one inflicted by one human upon another; not me upon you. The third story, about Quinn, was buried so deep within my Shadow realm that it almost didn't come back to life. At nine years of age I was a victim of a arm-twisting, bone-breaking assault of personal violence that resulted in a severe arm injury. Just recently, this wound has reawakened under the assault of arthritis. Nevertheless, when asked "Why are you so driven?" recalling this story gives rise to a "Hmmm?" Had I entered "where everything human is soon absent" when just a kid? Does this Quinn story hold the key to unlocking not only why I resisted violence as I did throughout my life but also help explain where I now seek to go in the Sunlight? The fourth story recounts how John Lennon helped me recognize today's campus radicals as my activist grandchildren. Listening to them enabled me to see how my time in prison's Shadow realm could aid them in compassionately guiding the globalization movement. Together, bridging the generations, all of us began to "Imagine" the Earthfolk vision.

#1—My brother Joseph and one mosquito

My youngest brother, Joseph, was the last of nine, the fourth son, being born with four immediately older sisters. Naturally he was the apple of everyone's eye. He was born August 23, 1956. I had just turned twelve when he was born, and he was as much my child as my brother.

Our family life in northern New Jersey included two weeks each summer in south Jersey "at the shore." Ours was a compact summer cottage in Forked River that we shared with my Uncle Gene's family. They went down in July. We arrived in August. There was no TV, the basement flooded when it rained, and we played lots of canasta and pinochle; a bit of badminton. However, the best part of summer for us kids was swimming in a nearby lake where I and my sibs learned to swim to the raft as a rite of passage. The area was often beset by heavy rains and armies of mosquitoes. This story, however, is about just one mosquito.

Just after breakfast I was sitting on the couch in the family room reading a book when Joey, just two years old, ambled up the stairs. We all knew that he had had a restless and fitful sleep. He had kept most of us floating in and out of dreamland as he cried almost the whole night. Once up the stairs he came over and lay down next to me. Within minutes he raised his head, slightly turning upwards to look at me, and then began to spew and spit foam. His eyes jiggled and rolled wildly. I jumped up yelling, "Mom. Dad. Something's wrong with Joey!"

Joey went rigid and into a relentless fit. My parents were desperate and despairing as the nearest hospital was more than forty miles away. Mom and Dad rushed him to the local bar, seeking help. There, someone doused him with booze since his head was simply ablaze. Of course we kids didn't know what was happening. On that day my parents lived out a nightmare of nightmares as they found themselves powerless to help their sweet child. Joey would live in a vegetative state for nine years. He died shortly before my Dad. The mosquito would kill twice.

What happened? One mosquito bites a bird and then becomes a carrier of encephalitis. All of us, brothers and sisters, have said repeatedly that it was unfortunate Joey did not die right away. While we took him home to be with us, it is a stretch to say that he "lived" with us. He required twenty-four hours a day attention, and was totally non-communicative. At the same time the company my father worked for as a chemist was purchased by 3M. They wanted to relocate him from Jersey to Minnesota. Dad, at fifty, was from the generation where you worked for one company all your life, as did his brother. He was also a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker: loved the opera, fine dining, etc. The stress of the simultaneous upheavals in his career and family's collective health only weakened a constitution with inherited heart problems. Dad's mom had died of heart related issues while he was in college at Notre Dame. Now he had his own heart-attack. His job prospects went from difficult to impossible. Thanks to the generosity of 3M, my Dad was re-offered the position he had at first refused, and so we moved to Minnesota in the summer of 1960.

Right before we left my brother George totaled the family station wagon. So as our home goods were moved by vans the rest of us—with George left behind in the hospital with a long metal pin in one leg and more stitches than I could count—traveled to Minnesota on a long, creeping slug of a train. We arrived in a Midwestern world as surreal to urban us as Mars would have been. Hastings, Minnesota in 1960 had a population stretching towards five thousand. We were city folk and both my Mom and Dad had been born on Manhattan Island. Down the street from our new home, miles of cornfields unfolded beyond eyesight. Only now do I appreciate all that my parents faced and overcame. In time, for proper care, Joey had to be placed in a nursing home run by Catholic nuns. At the same time my four younger sisters were consigned to a residential high school also run by nuns. Faced with the dire options afforded by small town high schools, I chose not to spend my junior year at Hastings High. Rather, I left for the Franciscan minor seminary back East on Staten Island. Only my older sister and her husband remained in town with my parents.

Joey's death simply undid my father. I remember watching him weep over my brother's coffin and whisper, "It won't be too long, Joey, and I'll be with you." A bit over a year later, Dad died of heart failure. On my father's gravestone is written, "They Will Be Done." I've always hoped that he found the courage in his last moments to utter that phrase. This was Christmas, 1968.

Of course, these two deaths impacted everyone in the family. Such Shadow events are always crushing and life-altering. I had just graduated with my Masters and was teaching college visions in the Chicago area. Within months I was drafted and returned to Minnesota to fulfill my two years of Alternative Service as a Conscientious Objector. I served as a staff member at the Newman Center on the University of Minnesota campus.

Without doubt Joey's story was reawakened when Gordy came into my campus office and told me about his Search and Destroy missions. Gordy's "Instead of a hootch, it was a home... instead of a gook, it was a human being" meant that no human being was a gook, not even an incapacitated, vegetative, non-communicative being like Joey. I wrapped up my final argument to the jurors—right after telling them Joey's story—with a heartfelt, mythic plea, "If you can't give life, don't take it!"

#2—Two Boys

I heard Nicholas shriek. It was a haunting sound which had pursued me in my nightmares for years. Now, in a flashback of photographic imagery, I am seeing my little brother Joey enter death's jaws once more. Time and again Nick shrieks. His pain throttles my brain, my heart goes oomph! I'm agitated and befuddled like waking from a chase dream. Both boys are shrieking. I rush into the kitchen, force myself to confront this re-enactment. Nick is in his high-chair, foaming at the mouth. With heart-stopping dread, I watch my son being clenched by the familiar jaws of death.

_Flashback_ : Joey had just turned two and was crawling up the stairs on threes and fours. He nestled himself next to me on the couch. I continued reading. I touched him gently because I knew that he had had a terrible night.... He uttered a desperate sound as foam spewed and fluttered from his mouth.

In the kitchen, my Nicholas recoiled, arms rifled upwards, and that dreaded sound—of pain accompanied by bewilderment—scored my ears. Convulsive spittle sprayed his high chair tray and the most terrifying re-run of my life began to unfold.

I had never wanted to know what Mom and Dad experienced as they scrambled, talking in shouts of fears and prayers, from our summer cottage in south Jersey with Joey in their arms, stiff as a fireplace log. I didn't want, ever, to ever approach the pain of diminishing hope as they raced along country roads not knowing where to find a doctor and, finally, having to settle for a bartender's whiskey bath, the sole medical application available to apply in an effort to lower Joey's extreme temperature. As I grew older, I prayed that I would never have to walk into a hospital room and observe the skillful dance of white-coated healers around the body of my child. [Never, it would never happen twice in my life!] I never wanted to have that one-on-one meeting where such words as "We cannot determine the cause" and "We've done all one could, but..." and "It is now in the hands of God" were spoken.

I never, in all my prayers, ever prayed for the strength to be as stolid in the faith as my Mom and Dad had been. They were tested and proven true. "No," I uttered inwardly, "I need not be tested. Surely, God is satisfied with our family's witness!" Yet here is Nicky, exactly the same age as Joey and quite similar in body type, suffering as if one.

I was spared some of the duration of my parent's immediate pain. They had been in a rural part of the state and quite remote from hospitals and doctors. We lived but a dozen blocks from a medical center. As I screamed at my wife and older son to get dressed, I cradled Nicky in my arms, too dumbstruck to cry. So much seemed a re-run of Mom and Dad that I kept pounding words and cries at the reality of the moment. Can't be! Not this! Why? I had only blocks to drive to reach the Emergency Room but—Fuck!—we were hampered by a raging Maryland blizzard. I was a wild man at the wheel. Furiously flashing my lights and pounding the horn, I slid and maneuvered past every stoplight. Although I sped, the road before me seemed endless. I was treading every inch of the way as if I was crawling on hands and knees. I could feel the road scrape my flesh. In the madness of it all every car on the road resented my disregard for law and order and angrily beeped and flashed at me. Curses and cries of "Idiot!" were amplified by my wife's own gasps and pleas that I slow down and "Don't get us all killed!"

The last fifty yards to the Emergency Room was slush and blowing snow. Nicholas was still rigid. I felt what could only have been the male equivalent of the onset of birthing. The door to Shady Grove hospital got larger and larger and I sensed that we, Nicholas and I, were dying towards a light.

When they brought us all—all eight of us, three brothers and five sisters —to see Joey at St. Vincent's in New York City, we, as a family, were beyond tears. We were dedicating our daily prayers to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes, and also invoking the miraculous intercession of Blessed Mother Seton, whom the Roman Catholic Church felt was a candidate for sainthood. We hoped that Joey would be one of her three required miracles. Each time we entered Joey's room, we harbored the prayful expectation that in front of our eyes God would work a miracle—"Sweet Jesus!" We were of such a faith that what to others was unbelievable or impossible was the stuff of daily anticipation. Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead and cured numerous others. That such physical healing was to be confidently expected was part of our beliefs and faith. We, confident in hope, expected a miracle-as-magic—a suspension of physical laws.

Joey never recovered or even approached being near normal. He became a totally vegetative person. Many times during my moments with him—at home or in the nursing facility where we sadly had to place him—I yearned to communicate with him. I tried hard to speak to his eyes or hug him with an embrace which would say to his heart "I love you. You are my brother—my little brother and I will care for you, protect you, forever." But I have never been able to state, to confess—until now—that I did not believe that I had touched him. I for so many years felt because of Joey's unrelenting pain and suffering that all that I had believed in, all the comfort which I hoped Jesus would provide, were empty promises. My arms hugged him over the years but only the void, that terrible emptiness, pressed my heart. What was I to make of faith, hope, and worship when at this moment of trial—trial not just for me but for God—that I found only the hopelessness of my own inability to hear a response from God through Joey? God—offered the chance—had not acted as only God can, that is, miraculously.

As I looked at Nicky, with tubes in and out of him, I knew that I must not leave him for a moment. The head nurse moved us, after the first night in intensive care, to a room with a roll down couch. Through snatches of sleep I made it around the clock mostly sitting at his bedside holding his hand. He was maintained at a high level of sedation although this did not stop his predictable seizures. His small body was like a sensitive seismograph. It registered each movement towards the seizure with twitches and a telling emptiness in his eyes. I could predict to the precise moment his progress to seizure. At first the nurses stoically tolerated my insistences, but as my accuracy improved they stood ready at my side. Despite the medication he would seize every seven minutes. With him I slid into the contortions of his body (a miniature scale of my own) from rigidity through spasm to flaccidity. He lay there—"My child!"—like jello. A doctor pushed up Nicky's arm and it slithered out of his hands like tear drops. I must confess that I wanted to die in his stead! That I petitioned heaven and all that was good on Earth to cast the evils spirits from his body into mine—make me into a swine of Gadarene! But this miracle was not to be, as it had not been with Joey. I would have to live through this experience in death's jaws, twice.

It took nine years for Joey's body to finally succumb. On a hot, muggy summer day under a bright sun and Minnesota lake-blue skies, our family stood before the carved pit which would receive the last born but first dead. We cried and we grieved as much from the hurt of powerlessness as from that of loss. Draped on Joey's casket, alongside the roses we each individually placed, were my lost beliefs and faith. No, right then I did not articulate it as such. As expected, back then we carried out in exacting detail the Catholic ceremonial ritual prayers for the dead. But as to each of his parents so to each of his siblings, I dissembled less than what I once had been as a person and a believer. As a family we were simply crushed by what had undone so many—the chilling lack of God's response to the question, "Why do evil things happen to innocent children?" No answer then; no answer now as Nicky plays Joey. Why was the question being revived through my flesh and blood? Am I the least believing of all?

All in all Nick's ordeal lasted only ten days. Days which included a Super Bowl. Dates which I cannot recall with hourly precision. Yet, for me each of the several CAT scans, the spinal taps, the blood tests, the electroencephalogram, each probe, shot, test and retesting is notched on my heart. Nevertheless, all went so fast that several neighbors did not know what happened until it was over.

Nicholas has scant memory of this event. My wife and other son stayed at home and to them it seemed to resolve itself quickly. But, what really happened? On the day the doctor later told me that she was coming to inform me that my son may never walk again, he was sitting up in bed...and shortly thereafter was cleared to go home the following day. Truly, What really happened?

I had just met my prison Shadow Mother at this time. I had begun to write about Her and to grapple with my subhumanity. All that I can say is that Nicholas and I went somewhere—to a place deep down in the Shadow realm. The image I recall is of a river in a deep forest. I simply know that I offered something in exchange for his life. Possibly a scale was adjusted and my own suffering weighed and found sufficient. I'm just not sure. All that I knew then—and reaffirm now—is that I am Nicholas' Shadow Mother. I held him and he survived. I could not stop his suffering.

#3—Quinn

I was fifty-eight, thirty-one years out of prison, and just recently divorced when I finally brought some Sunlight to what was obviously the deepest sector of my own personal Shadow realm—where I once again found Quinn. Now I'm a deeply reflective sort so you would have thought that by this age I would have dragged out every Shadow presence and worked to bring it to Sunlight. But here I was all of a sudden babbling and crying to my friend about Quinn.

"Quinn?" The name sounds and a spectral face pops up. Within me rages a savage struggle not to let this story reach consciousness. Some part of me crams and jams it down, pounds it mercilessly, tries to stuff, bury, entomb it deeply down, far off and way back into horrific memory. "Are you going to burn us?"

Bayonne, New Jersey, circa 1953. I'm tossing the football with all my might, all 90 sweating pounds of me, and my good friend Tony is running as fast as he can to catch my wobbly dying-duck heave. He snags it, falls to the ground.

"Hey, gimme that!" Like an angry ref, Quinn pokes and rips the ball from Tony's arms.

Quinn starts moving his feet like a QB, growls and orders Tony to "Go out for a long one!" Tony looks at him, fixated and terrified.

I'm afraid for Tony. We both have been scared silly by school yard stories about Quinn the Bully. So I start running, waving my arms frantically, trying to distract him. Quinn turns towards me, rifles the ball. It's a high-looping-down-the-field hurl that takes all that I have just to get my fingertips on it...I drop it.

"Ya screwed up ya lettle punk. Git over here!" Too frightened to run away, we both slowly gather around Quinn; huddle.

Quinn slaps me upside my head. "Can't do nuttin' right?"

Quinn is a lot like his older brother, Mark. So Tony tries to distract him. "You're really strong. You threw that a mile. Geez! Are you going out for varsity?"

Quinn spits, grabs Tony's right arm, pulls him close, then with his other hand starts squeezing his throat. Tony gags and gurgles. I heedlessly and weakly grab Quinn's wrist and try to yank him off Tony's throat.

"Yar nuttin' but lettle gurls!" And in one powerful swoop Quinn knocks both of us to the ground.

"Don't move!" he growls; snarls threateningly.

Tony and I wiggle close to one another, bonded by absolute terror. Quinn starts picking up and tossing sticks, leaves, pieces of newspaper and other debris on top of us. Finished, he pauses a moment, glares down at us, then as if about to light a cigarette he takes out a match, strikes it, it goes out. He takes out another, and as he does I freak out. Without a clear thought or plan I stand up, heart racing and pounding, a few words stumble from my lips.

"Don't hurt us, please." My please echoes throughout the cosmos.

"Look ya lettle twerp, don't move agin 'er I'll break yar fuckin' arm!" He knocks me back down to the ground. I scramble back very close to Tony; almost like lovers entwined.

For some reason Quinn can't light the match. He tries once, twice...as he does—God only knows why!—I start wiggling under the blanket of sticks and wads of newspaper.

"Hey, whadda I say?" Totally flipping out into rage Quinn hefts me up like a small sack of groceries. I'm just a nine-year-old skinny-as-a-twig kid and without effort he yanks my left arm up behind my back up to my ears, Crack! Crack!

It all goes fast-forward, the memory blurs: there is a woman on top of a nearby apartment building hanging out laundry. She must have seen what he did. She yells at Quinn—thank god she had the threatening Mommy voice that made him run away.

Hours later at home Dad has just gotten in from work. Mom tells him that I've been crying for hours, saying that my arm hurts. She had looked at me but didn't see any breaks in skin or bruises. Dad comes into the living room and asks me what happened. There are seven other children in the house, all vying for his attention and affection. I'm not too coherent; he's exasperated.

"What did you do to get him so angry?"

What did I do? Dad...What did I do?

I never get an answer to, Why doesn't anyone believe me?

_Revenge._ Should I be surprised now to relate that all my life I've been seeking revenge? On Quinn. That possibly revenge was the primal emotion that possessed and drove me? Honestly, I truly believe that revenge fueled my acts of personal willfulness—my Draft Resistance and nonviolent disobedience. I mean, what do you think must have gone on in my mind during the six months that I was in an upper body cast with my left arm raised and jutting out like a handle? Kids teased me by lifting my plaster arm, tipping me like a teapot: "Tea for two?" Should I doubt that revenge fueled my rapid physical growth spurt? Later on, to my parents' astonishment I grew near a foot during my freshman year and was 6'2" at 205 pounds as I entered my sophomore year of high school. This left me with life-long knee issues that are achingly revisiting me in my senior years.

_Shadow en_ ergy: Back then I took that scrawny 5'9", ninety-pound-something, eighth grade kid "Franny" and punished the hell out of him! I did a hundred push-ups, a hundred pull-ups, a hundred sit-ups, often a mile run every day, doing this every week, every year—my own boot camp regimen. I muscled into a top jock specimen and monster basketball center. I became "Frank." But by that time we had moved thirty miles away to suburban Westfield. Years later I heard that Quinn joined the paratroopers for a stint in Vietnam—just around the year I entered the Franciscan novitiate. Was it also revenge that drove me when I as a devoted young monk dragged myself every night—kneecap by kneecap scraping every inch of the way—around the perimeter of the chapel: thirteen Stations of the Cross? I had no idea then that I was deep into the darkest sector of my Shadow realm...empathetically being scourged, tears of blood running down my face, hammer and nails torturing out my every weakness. Some saw me as a dedicated monk and less than a decade later others saw me as a hero of nonviolent Resistance. But within my heart and soul Was I a victim lurking in the Shadows ever at the ready to lash out and become the victimizer?

_Sandstone, F.C. I_. When I meet the Corridor Captain, eye to eye, I reflexively start to greet him with a Hi! but something powerful holds me back. I am paralyzed by fright. No, no, it can't be! Fiery, gut-wrenching pains shoot all around inside my body and then burst forth from the two cracks in my broken left arm. I am back in Quinn's lot, under trash, watching him try to strike a match.

Corridor Captain Quinn? Is this what you did after serving in Nam?

Is this the answer to, "What made you go bonkers in the pastel blue segregation hole?" Ha. Everything in the Shadow realm comes back to the roost. Yet I must be fearlessly honest here and state that I did not personally will this re-encounter with Quinn. I did not personally free him from the darkness of my Shadow realm. No, I have to admit—and learn from this truth—that the memory was drawn out of me. Another Shadow Mother held me and forced me to face him. She was present through a woman lover who was listening to my prison tales. How did this happen? Simply my beloved opened to me her own sad story of "soon absent." Without knowing it we entered into Shadow intimacy, shared our unearned sufferings, and evoked a coupled presence. I was emotionally overwhelmed because she had wandered deeper into the Shadow realm than I ever thought possible or had heard anyone describe while Inside. Her accounts of life-long sexual violence made my prison sad story read like a comic book. I sensed—was overwhelmed, wept—that she had heard, possibly from her own mother, what my Dad had said, "What did you do to get him so angry?" She knew what she had not done. Hers was truly a story of "unearned sufferings," and she made me realize so was my story about Quinn.

She and I discussed Quinn and her acceptance of my Shadow self —as Avenger!—caused a great weight to be lifted off of me. I had been carrying Quinn around on my back for near fifty years. Yet nothing that one works on while in the Shadow realm, even if you successfully move beyond and out from the Shadow realm into the Sunlight, goes quietly and without inflicting another scar. While she Mothered me, I failed at Mothering her.

Lastly, I confess that it took more than just a bit of time for me to own up to my being on a quest for revenge. As often happens, a "lucid dream" brought all to a final settlement—not a conclusion, just a settlement.

My lucid dream: I'm back in pastel blue hell, dreaming this dream. Yeowie! I'm bigger than Quinn now. He's showing his age; a pot belly. As soon as he notices me he bolts, running frantically. He heads for a nearby park, tries hiding among the trees. But he knows I'm coming. Slowly, methodically, confidently I'm hunting the Quinn down. Things escalate as they do in dreams and all at once I'm running all out, whooping as I plunge through thick pines, quickly striding up and down gullies, vaulting across Monk's Creek—it's like I'm flying! Ha. I'm giggling, choking on my glee, taste hot blood swell up under my tongue. Now the victim is the feared one!

Quinn panics and stumbles, slips, slides down a deep embankment, gets dangerously entangled in a thicket of briars. Snared! Trapped! It is then and there that I jump to a halt right next to him, glare down, snarling—gloating!—am ready for the kill.

I laugh wickedly, shout, "Who's powerless now, asshole?"

In a flash I'm down on top of him. My right arm vise-locks around his throat. I snort and hoist Quinn upwards and backwards and in a continuous motion flip him over onto the ground, face up. His body bounces up and down several times, crumpling into a sprawl. With an effortless motion I pounce, slip and twist my bowie knife into his heart.

_Die, motherfucker_!

#4—John Lennon's "Imagine"

As a white-hair I've realized the curious truth that if you live long enough everything will become what you didn't expect it to. Sitting in Sandstone prison, if someone came up and said, "Someday they'll write a play about you guys," it would have depressed the hell out of me. I failed at stopping a war—great play theme, eh? But a play did happen, near forty years later. In 2008, "Peace Crimes: the Minnesota 8 vs. the war," premiered at the University of Minnesota. It was a collaboration between the History Theatre, the Playwrights' Center, and the Theatre Arts and Dance Department of the University of Minnesota. Doris Baizley was the commissioned playwright, and after visiting with the 8, penned the play. Ron Peluso of the History Theatre directed it, and it was performed at the University since, as Sherry Wagner-Henry, Managing Director of the University Theatre said, "We were struck by the fact that this was a play that not only happened with University of Minnesota students back in the 1970s but really was part of the campus."

Having been a senior sales and marketing executive for the prior three decades I took it upon myself to move back to Minnesota in the summer of 2005 and form the public relations project, "Peace and War in the Heartland." For three years I organized promotional and educational events on regional college campuses, and in the process discovered the Earthfolk. Note, "Earthfolk" is not an ontological term, that like an archeologist all of a sudden I came across a "hidden civilization"—although there is a flavor of that in my discernments. Rather I sensed a heartfelt commitment to a global vision that was driven by a passionate sense of respect for, and an effort to honor, all humans as part of a vibrant web of life. This included a deep concern for things non-human as the vision not only did not value one species above another but affirmed the right of all things to co-exist in balance and harmony. This vision was expressed through dedicated acts of compassion, notably by young Iraqi and Afghanistan war veterans and campus activists who volunteered with the PWH project.

Somewhat amusingly, the play came about because of my personal paranoia during the Nixon years. Tricky Dick had been so hell bent on rounding up all draft resisters and anti-war radicals and tossing them in prison that I feared the feds would, once we were all in jail, systematically destroy any trace of us—an Orwellian conceit, I admit. So, while waiting for my appellate decision to come down, I compiled trial testimony, underground and mainstream newspaper clippings, photographs, and whatever I could that related to our story and put it all in the archives at the Minnesota Historical Society. I must note that validating a bit of my paranoia was the razing of the West Bank building that housed the Twin Cities Draft Information Center while we were in prison. No one knew why and who authorized it. For decades it remained an empty lot between two similar and otherwise untouched buildings. Also during these pre-Pentagon Papers and pre-Watergate years, Nixon was in his ascendancy and the federal courtrooms were clogged by draft related trials and the prisons packed with radicals and resisters—in Sandstone alone our number neared fifty.

While speaking on campus and working with young activists my visions of peacemaking language about war as a social ritual and my developing Outlaw Visions about prison's Shadow Mother and abusive mythic parenting didn't come across if I tried to anchor it all with biblical references to the Garden of Eden or religious visions and the like. Not to be hogtied by my own peculiar words, I listened to the veterans and activists and it dawned on me that these were the children of John Lennon, most of whom had first heard "Imagine" as a child's lullaby.

Was "Imagine" a sad or glad story? Actually, it was both. Its glad story rises from a series of negatives about a value system that Lennon was rejecting, in my terms, the values of the Lone Male imagination. With old ears I heard the beat and rhythm of this Sixties' anthem as a hymn of Outlaw Visions.

Before talking about my grandchildren, I want to present some additional personal background that helps explain why "Imagine" became this bridge between generations.
Chapter 11: The Bomb and Earth-America

Me and the Atom Bomb—"Happy birthday!"

I am one of a dying breed. I claim what fewer and fewer can each year, namely, that I lived one full year before "America" was obliterated by a singular event that gave rise to a new national mythic story and identity. That event was the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Japan and the consequent emergence of mythic "Earth-America."

I was born in Bayonne, New Jersey on August 6, 1944. On my first birthday the Atomic Bomb exploded— Bang!—and the iconic image of the Mushroom Cloud scored itself onto the collective human psyche. I grew up aware of this quite earth-shattering event more so because I attended Daily Mass just about every day of my youth. For Catholics that date was also the religious Feast of the Transfiguration. Scripture read, "Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: 'This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!'" Mark 9:7 On one birthday—actually while chanting this verse as novice monk Friar Otto, O.F.M., Conv.—I gasped, _Clouds!_

Jesus' Cloud thundered with the voice of God. The Atomic Bomb's Mushroom Cloud rumbled and boomed...what? What was announced by this truly revolutionary, technologically savage roar!? Was it just that a war had gloriously ended? Or was something else thundered that only twice-bodied ears could hear?

For decades, especially on my birthday, I would venture into a deep reflection on the godly voice that must have echoed within the Mushroom Cloud. However for most of my life I did not know how to frame questions about the Mushroom Cloud because I was still, myself, a Lone Male and had been trained to avoid the Shadow realm. Until a subhuman, I had never heard or allowed myself to consider that the United States was culpably immoral or could do evil deeds. With such a one-bodied mindset I read up on the Manhattan Project (with Dad ethereally looking over my shoulders) and several accounts about Enola Gay and the first reactions of the bombers and the bomb-makers. Like most Americans I was not prepared to consider the Bomb other than a good moral act that saved lives by shortening WW II. Mine and the nation's was clearly a one-bodied reaction.

The Shadow of the Bomb

My assessment of this "good moral act" began to shift during graduate school, in the late Sixties, as I began to read about the Nazi concentration camps—sparked by Elie Wiesel's _Night,_ Victor Frankl's _Man's Search for Meaning_ , and the growing body of Holocaust literature. It was easy to denounce Hitler as the embodiment of evil, as a denizen of hell (I didn't have Shadow language back then). The horror he unleashed had, as I read, nothing to do with the biblical tradition. In fact Nazism seemed quite explicitly a wholesale rejection of biblical truths and values. Nonetheless, while that was true on the linguistic surface, a question arose: Were there underlying cultural and moral values that were alike or even twins? The values of the Lone Male vision were just starting to form in my mind during these years. What shocked me was not the differences between Nazism and Earth-America but their common mythic heritage. Both were hell bent on dominating the world and would not let any barrier—physical or moral—stand in their way. Nazism was a cult of hyper-military masculinity—Nietzsche's "Superman" cult. This fell in line with the dominant Christian view of Jesus as "Christus Victor" (Christ the Victor or King) which was the theological icon behind the Crusades and pogroms. Mythic twins: Nazi supermen and Christian saviors of the world?

Over time as I read more about the creation of and conscious decisions made to drop the Bomb—not once but twice—I couldn't help but question whether the Bomb was on par with or even a greater evil than the Holocaust. I was greatly influenced by the work of Robert Jay Lifton and the Bomb survivor accounts of the _hibakusah_. I asked myself, If I had been a German intellectual and aware of Hitler's camps would I have seen them as a "good moral act"? Would I have simply accepted the camps as a necessary but regrettable transition to the birth of the New Age, of the Third Reich? As abhorrent as that might seem, I questioned whether we Americans who supported dropping the Bomb did not as readily accept it as being a necessary but regrettable transition to the birth of Peace through the end of a war?

As evidently mythic as the concentration camps were—where individuals were of no account as each individual's annihilation ("Smoke 'em!") manifested mythic Victory, Triumph, Fatherland, and Purity—so with twice-bodied sensing was the Manhattan Project a mythic zone. Like their Nazi peers, and actually with some captured Nazi scientists on staff, the Project's military led and managed team of scientists planned for the first-ever act of human vaporization. Poof! In this light, the Project was mythic in a character never before even imaginable. It sought to obliterate any semblance of human existence as it reduced—Flash!—persons to atoms, human forms to blackened shadows on walls. No stinky smoke. No odor of burnt flesh. No recyclable gold fillings or messy left behinds. After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, investigators saw the blackened "nuked" images of people on walls. As reported, "...in Hiroshima {people} were vaporized and literally turned into shadows."

As part of Hitler's launch of the Third Reich his scientists created the world's most efficient, effective and productive mass murder assembly line. People went up in whorls of smoke. At the same time, his Nazi scientists were pursuing the creation of the world's first weapon of mass destruction—but we beat the vile Nazis to the punch with our own Nazi scientists. Consider: With these two weapons of mass destruction (camps and Bombs) would Hitler's empire have rapidly spanned and dominated the globe? At its core, **Wasn't Nazism a vision of globalization? Wasn't the rise of Earth-America likewise a vision of globalization?**

Of significant note is that each of these two hideous weapons was a historic first. No weapon of mass destruction or "Final Solution" production facility had previously existed. However, the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb upped the ante as it gave rise to the specter of species suicide. Dropping it was an act beyond the measure of any normative moral scale as no one knew exactly what would happen when it would first explode. It was even discussed whether the explosion would suck all the oxygen out of the atmosphere, effectively killing everyone, even its creators. There was no moral calculus for evaluating a weapon that destroyed everyone—effecting global suicide. Simply, the scale of the Project was mythic and consequently no extant morality could assess or judge it. Consider: Both weapons—camps and the Bomb—violated every principle of the Just War theory, so either both should be equally condemned or, as I allege happened, we should admit that a new morality emerged. From within the Mushroom Cloud emerged the face and voice of Earth-America revealing the morality of globalization—Lone Male Dominion morality.

Earth-America

Did the voice from within the Mushroom Cloud thunder, "Earth-America!"?

With twice-bodied ears I wondered, Did Hitler die and Nazism thrive? Had America been transfigured into the global empire that Hitler sought to create? It was widely known that the Manhattan Project used Nazi scientists and research to create the Bomb and lay the basis for the military industrial complex. Had Americans then simply slain one Captor to unwittingly enslave themselves to another? Here not an individual tyrant but to a Captor's vision of Nazi-like world dominance, that of the ever-expanding military-industrial-academic vision of Earth-America?

My Dad would have been furious with me if I had spoken like this when he was alive, but as told he died before I was present to my twice-bodied suhumanness. For him and his generation they had stopped a demonic madman. Good did triumph over Evil, and he and his comrades made the cities, towns, farms, and villages of America, indeed the world, once again safe for democracy. Few in his generation had President Dwight D. Eisenhower's ("Ike") premonitions about the dark forces he saw coalescing whose goal was to make war-making a profitable business venture. As a five-star Army General, Eisenhower served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during WWII, and later he became the first supreme commander of NATO. So my Dad, assuredly, listened to this speech but did not hear it with twice-bodied ears. As I read Ike's famous farewell address it seems quite clear that he sensed that something very profound—equally threatening and ominous—was changing America, and not necessarily for the better.

"Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry...we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions....We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience....we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.

.......

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

...We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." (President Eisenhower's "Farewell Speech," 1961)

What was this new mythic Earth-America? After WWII "America" was certainly no longer adequately defined in terms of the geographical territory of the United States. Instead, Earth-America was the world. Simply, the post-WWII military did not retract its global reach rather it began to construct permanent outposts—its own world-wide-web. Currently, Earth-America has established over 700 military posts on every continent except Antarctica (a treaty exclusion). How should these awesome changes that have occurred since the Nuclear Age opened be assessed? Facts such as: the United States has 7,200 and Russia over 6,000 nuclear warheads? That twenty-five countries have ballistic missiles, and seven are self-declared nuclear weapon states: the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, and Pakistan?

What insight or meaning can be gathered by meditating on the fact that because of the Atomic Bomb, for the first time ever, human beings were vaporized. _Poof!_

"Peace and War in the Heartland" made all these questions that I had mulled over for decades of relevance to my discussions with today's students and activists. As happens when elders and youth gather, a lot of our discussions centered around "then and now." Our most popular Minnesota 8 picture was one taken in 2006 by the same photographer who had shot us during a trial break back in 1971. She posed us in the exact same positions. In a way we all were still those activists, remaining young in mind and heart and passionately concerned about the issues of our own youth. I was encouraged that the questions I had as a young activist were still ones that my grandchildren were asking. Part of me was also discouraged in that these questions about social justice, peace, and nonviolence were still unanswered.

Among the many disturbing questions we discussed were:

• _Is the whole human race suffering from Atomic Bomb post-traumatic stress disorder?_

• _Why have we been globally engaged in endless warring?_

• _Why has every major global economy become militarized?_

• _Why is someone somewhere always being called "enemy"?_

I asked, _Did our collective human psyche terrorize and traumatize itself on August 6, 1945?_ Are we doomed to nuclear self-annihilation? Is there no hope for world peace? Is all lost? None disagreed when I somberly concluded that deep down our collective global human psyche and communal heart was steeped in and paralyzed by a dreadful fear—of the Other we called enemy, and, most of all, ourselves. Like the famous Pogo cartoon strip—sadly—trumpeted, "We have met the enemy and he is us." It is we who unleashed a power we could and cannot control. The Mushroom Cloud's brilliance blinded us to our Shadow and yet stands to make everyone on Earth and the Earth itself an enemy and victim of nuclear obliteration— _Poof!_

For a good part of every promotional and educational event there was near three generations of activists sitting together, facing the Mushroom Cloud's Shadow, totally bummed out.
Chapter 12: Imagining other people as beloveds

Unintended consequence: "Earthrise"

I found myself speaking about "dwelling peacefully and comfortably at home on the Living Earth." But how could I be hopeful or optimistic given that the globally militarized Earth-America was entering its sixth decade and was deeply entrenched in several wars, one which was even an self-proclaimed invasion—which by Just War standards made the President, if not all America's People, a war criminal? The source of my upbeat witness to them was an image that took root in and shook the human psyche much as did the Mushroom Cloud. However, this image was initially intended as a second icon of Earth-America, and actually remains so for many. Ironically, what it came to mean to me and so many others over time, especially as I developed twice-bodied senses, was not what Earth-America's leaders intended.

On December 24, 1968 the image called "Earthrise"—the first ever photographic image of Earth from outer space—was snapped by an Apollo 8 astronaut on a military expedition in the moon race against the Commie "Red Menace." For Earth-Americans it trumpeted victoriously, The whole planet is ours! For them one immediate task was to plan for what became known (through several morphing identities) as the "Star Wars" defense, that is, placing in orbit a flotilla of nuclear armed satellites, effectively controlling outer space. As JFK had said,

"We are in a strategic space race with the Russians and we have been losing .... Control of space will be decided in the next decade. If the Soviets control space, they can control Earth, as in the past centuries the nations that controlled the seas dominated the continents."(1960 presidential campaign speech)

But consider this: The unintended impact of Earthrise was that it startled many people like me as if from a deep sleep, an ancient slumber. It stirred the core depth of our imaginations and set our hearts beating. Instinctively we uttered a primal, "Mother!" Never before had any human ever seen this picture of our home—Spaceship Earth, The Blue Marble, Starship Earth. Imaginatively we were happily present at home. We recognized ourselves as one Family. More, we felt ourselves embraced within an Earth-wide parental presence, that of Mother Earth, Herself. It was then that into my one-bodied mind a word popped up—Earthfolk—about whose meaning I barely had a clue.

In mainstream history books, August 6, 1945 and December 24, 1968 are bookends to the start of Earth-America's efforts to get "control of space" through militarizing outer space. Within the span of those twenty-three years, the Nuclear Age opened and the militarization of the core institutions of the dominant global societies took deep root—continuing to this day and heading beyond tomorrow. As I looked back in order to look forward with my grandchildren, I began to espy the historical outline of the Earthfolk movement as it formed as a counter-movement to Earth-America. It became clear that the seeds of the Earthfolk vision were planted by an array of independent protest, social justice, and anti-militarization movements.

Continuing since the Sixties a range of interconnected, dissenting views were publicly aired and championed by various "movements," including the:

•nonviolent movement,

•civil rights movement,

•anti-war movement,

•women's movement,

•gay rights movement,

•Native American movement, and the

•Green movement, among others.

As I talked with these activist youths I saw how my encounter with my prison Mother prepared me to make a heartfelt witness to them about the presence of the Earth as a Living Earth, as Her body, and the derived fact that, in truth, we are not "motherless children." I related that I was amazed and enthralled as I looked upon Earthrise and She smiled back at me. "Mother Earth!" Here was the one image that all of us, young and old, felt stirred our deepest feelings concerning what it meant to be human and how we should see one another. As we looked upon one (an)Other we felt bonded as family as we celebrated Mother Earth and Father Sky.

Talking with youth, I also soon discerned how Earth-America mutated from within the biblical tradition. While Earth-America visionaries did not use traditional biblical and theological imagery—scratching biblical terms out and writing over them with secular and scientific terms—they effectively translated the meanings and expressed the core values of the Lone Male biblical tradition of Dominion. Here lay the origins of Earth-America's globalization vision— in my coinage, that of the "Earthpeople."

Earthpeople

What changed in the conversation after the Mushroom Cloud and Earthrise events was that most people accepted that we humans are one species—Earth's people. It became widely accepted that all humans are part of the web of life that is unique to the Blue Marble. However, this web of life only described a biological truth. It did not call forth a new mythic story of origin. Humans remained motherless children.

"Earthpeople" were activists engaged in a range of social justice and social service movements. They were, for instance, Green, into Native American spirituality, anti-racist and anti-sexist—good people doing good for Others. But as I engaged them, I described them as Earthpeople and not Earthfolk mainly because they expressed the biblical atheism that denies the existence of a Mother. For them Mother Earth was a metaphor, not a Living presence. They were, it was painful to point out, acting out Dominion without owning up to doing so—a Lone Male one-body trait. They were the latest evolution of the Lone Male vision and value system. They sought Dominion over the Earth although they were claiming that they were making the Earth "flat"—doing away with the old hierarchal (some would even say old patriarchal) systems on every front. They advocated globalization in the way I had initially advocated Resistance to the war, that is, through nonviolent Dominion.

In the main, my campus forays revealed that the first phase of the globalization movement was being guided by this Earthpeople vision and value set. Tellingly, these Lone Male Earthpeople could not see their own Shadow. While among themselves they argued about and advocated sustainability or being Green or creating a more socially just global society or even maintaining a nonviolent peace-keeping force, they failed to grasp that the core of their message was still that someone is the enemy, someone is Other, that there are gooks, somewhere. They perpetuated a static black-and-white dualism that at its base sustained the belief that humans are motherless children. Although most were not directly involved with military institutions or projects, when pressed to commit to pacifistic nonviolence they balked. At some point nonviolence was impractical, so they argued, and they remained open to the principle and practice of a first-strike use of violence when "necessary"—echoing the traditional "Just War" argument. Significantly, their Dominion was expressed through an attitude and practice of cultural superiority as they never doubted that biblically grounded secularism must be adopted by everyone if the Earth is to survive.

Notably, a segment of the Earthpeople were self-identified religious or spiritual youths and activists, some of a conservative evangelical bent, who had no problem being Green, nonviolent, anti-racist, anti-sexist, etc., because they interpreted their faith mandate in Genesis 1 as a call to become Stewards of the world, not predatory Dominators. While they could not worship a Mother Goddess and did not honor Mother Earth as a divine Mother, I honored that they personally acted in ways that made Her present. As you might anticipate, we often engaged in arduous theological discussions.

In sum, Earthpeople were global conquerors expressing Dominion. Like the biblical Chosen People, they saw their culture (militaristic and scientific) as a replacement for less advanced (materially and technologically wanting) cultures. Like monotheistic worshipers of "no god but our god" they deemed their secular faith in the Earthpeople vision to be absolutely and unequivocally necessary for the survival of the planet. However, I sensed that "Save the Earth!" was simply a variant of "Jesus Saves!" For them, the Other was anyone who resists and chooses not to be a node on the world-wide-web, not to be Internetted. These un-webbed nonbelievers were an enemy of eco-and-cyber-Progress—a notion imbued with the imperialistic spirit of America's historic Manifest Destiny. Without any moral qualms or boundaries, Earthpeople sought to "Make the World Safe for Democracy" as Earth-America became "One world-wide-web under God."

The Earthpeople's Lone Male imagination was deeply embedded in the individual and communal psyche of most people. However, the Lone Male vision was not limited to biblical and Western traditions. Rather, its vision and values have come to be the way through which almost every religious, theological, or spiritual tradition (East and West) has interpreted and molded itself. It became clearer that the Lone Male was the common thread linking the biblical to the secular vision and values of today's Earth-America's Earthpeople.

The necessity of becoming an Outlaw Theologian

Of course I didn't say "Outlaw Theologian" because for this generation visions was either basically irrelevant to politics and social justice or was an esoteric academic pursuit. Unlike the Sixties, no one was seriously looking towards church leaders to be in the forefront of their various justice movements. Nevertheless, I knew that unless they came to understand the significance of the mythic question "Are we humans motherless children?" and developed an outlaw theological interpretation of the biblical tradition that they would fail as I had once failed. Not fail in terms of ending the wars because the Lone Male will wage wars until he commits suicide, but fail in the sense of living outside the Lone Male imagination. They would remain Earthpeople as long as they continued to live affirming the core value of biblical atheism that states that there is no Divine Mother. Despite all their good works, they would remain as Captives of the Lone Male—for some, through Stewardship. I had to convince and encourage them to become outlaws and Outlaw Theologians, to choose being an Earthfolk over being an Earthpeople.

I was very forthright about my Shadow insights into my nonviolence being a Lone Male energy, one that cited someone as enemy (the System, The Man, etc.) and which sought Dominion (being a winner, #1—"We stopped the war!"). To enable them to get a radically critical perspective on the Shadow aspects of their own movements and practices, I had to show why it was absolutely necessary that each person get in touch with their own subhumanness. Although I had Martin Luther King's words in my ears as I listened to them, with this generation, it appeared that I should start with John Lennon's vision.

**#4—"Imagine" the Earthfolk Vision** (continued)

What led John Lennon to write "Imagine"?

I answered by positioning Lennon as a cultural prophet who looked about the Sixties and, despite how it appeared—internecine racial battles, wars on foreign soil, shattering of cultural sexual taboos—envisioned a world where all people lived together as one family, dwelling peacefully and comfortably at home on the living Earth. The pressing question then: Was Lennon's vision unfolding or are his words, forty years later, those of a self-deluded soul?

I stated that prophets lived on the grand scale, in the public eye. Most who heard them lived out the shared quest on the smaller scale, in private lives. Lennon's murder silenced his public voice, but for many, the quest continued as we sought to give private voice to his vision. As with Lennon's voice, those of Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Fred Hampton, Dan and Phil Berrigan, and others muffled by time still spoke to me and I introduced them to these young activists.

I related that when Bob Dylan and the Beatles first sang of "Revolution," I was deep into my draft board raiding, trial, and prison years. At times I chuckled realizing that some youths perceived me as an ambulatory historical footnote. Yet as I took PWH onto college campuses, I learned how alive this Sixties' vision of "Imagine" was in the hearts and minds of these campus activists. I often joked that at least every activist on campus could hum John Lennon's "Imagine"!

The play, "Peace Crimes," got their attention and was a bridge for many conversations. The play was painfully relevant as two wars were raging and the core Sixties challenge—how to effectively resist nonviolently through civil disobedience—was still a hot topic. In stark contrast to the popular media statement that these young people were not as involved as we were in the Sixties, I was humbled by the range of commitments and the scope and depth of the intellectual synthesis that they acted upon.

As we talked, a set of diverse themes surfaced, some specific to particular movements, and, as mentioned, one appeared as common to all: They valued the Earth. Everyone was—at the start—one of the Earthpeople, being Earth-centered and maintaining a global consciousness. This wasn't just an airy intellectual conviction, rather, and more impressively, it was a deeply passionate—heartfelt and in the gut—conviction that was source to how they were responding to various injustices. Despite this general Earthpeople linkage and camaraderie I sensed that they lacked a cohesive way to weave these movements together to articulate the Earthfolk vision.

I laughed because this was just how things were during the Sixties. We had lacked a coherent vision—we were just a "Movement"—so we mingled various theoretical analyses, for example, Marxism with Catholic social justice and the Quaker call to "speak truth to power." Back then what we did share was an impassioned heartfelt resistance to racist lynchings and the dropping of napalm to burn "yellow people" alive.

This said, there was also something present that we had lacked in the Sixties. It was as if on the tip of the collective tongue this unifying Earthfolk vision was ready to be articulated. Yet what I had to share about my prison journey through the Shadow realm I knew would not settle easy with a lot of these activists because I would be making them aware of their Captor glad story and life-style and its Captive sad story and Lone Male visions.

Overall I was buoyed by my grandchildren's fierce optimism in the face of a slew of injustices. Instead of chanting the hippie dope-head mantra—"Tune in. Turn on. Drop out!"—they tuned in, turned on, and went out to organize and protest. They were thinking globally and acting locally at a depth and with an energy truly admirable. Nevertheless, the most unsettling difference between us was soon evident. It was a category of difference not just generational but of a quality of being, that is, I was a subhuman. So I gave them a perspective on my personal Dark Night's journey wherein I discovered my subhumanness.

I related that like many of their actual grandfathers, I was a World War II "war baby" who grew up in the 1950s liking Ike, believing that "Father Knows Best," and personally confident (after JFK's election as president in 1963) that by being a good Catholic I was a true-blue American. In depressing contrast to the Fifties, the Sixties were a complete downer: an era of relentless disillusionment, moral betrayal by leaders of Church and State, and a crushing sense of personal and social powerlessness. The bullets that killed JFK and his brother Bobby, Martin Luther King and the Black Panther Fred Hampton, as well as the white students at Kent State and their peers at the historically black Jackson State, killed me. I shared the truth that my draft resistance was largely sourced in my howling grief at the loss of my own and America's innocence.

Another profound and defining difference between us was that these young activists had grown up fully knowledgeable about the Shadow realm. Whereas historical accounts of the women's movement, slavery and racism, the several Native American Trail of Tears, an impending ecological doomsday, and animal abuse, among others, were "new histories" to my generation, these were common topics in today's classrooms. These young folks were on the other side of the disillusionment divide in respect to the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran Contra, and recurring political scandals. They were beyond Three Mile Island, Agent Orange, Love Canal, Exxon Valdez, and other ecological disasters. Moreover, they were sensitive to topics not even imaginable in the Sixties—for example, PETA and the Animal Liberation Front's challenge to the injustice of speciesism.

Slowly a unifying vision that fleshed out Lennon's "Imagine" emerged in images, words, a random phrase as I labored to build a bridge from my early idealism to theirs. My youthful actions had thrust me into the Shadow realm—although no one back then used that term—and that was precisely the bridge! Having reflected on my Dark Night for nearly forty years, I now realized that imagining a life-affirming vision that integrated insights from the Shadow realm was what was on the tip of their collective activist tongue. It was She, the Shadow Mother, who was the bridge. I had to help them discover Her within their own lives.

Introducing the Inside

I explained why prison was aptly termed the Inside, and recounted my development from the pastel blue solitary experience to the descent into "where everything human is soon absent." I was conscious of their Hollywood versions of prison life, so I took pains to both humanize the inmates and not to romanticize the experience. I said "motherfucking" one too many times, I'm sure.

I related that when I was first handcuffed, chained, stripped, fingerprinted, and photographed, it was momentarily like being in a play. However, right after the first "Light's out!" when the iron gate clanged shut, I had a panic attack. It was a sizzling hot July night, the whole county jail was like an oven, and I lay on my bed shivering, goose bumps amok, and sweating the sheets wet. Having never had a panic attack, I thought I was dying. Others in my felonious crew snored away, amazingly content.

Truth be told, I should have been the one least freaked out. I'd been a monk—hungered in Black Fasts, whipped my flesh in ritual flagellation, exposed my wet chest to Indiana's below-zero winter winds, crawled every night on my knees around the Stations of the Cross, surrendered my cock, and strove to live the via crucis (the Way of the Cross). In my fervent idealism, I had been ready to die for the faith, have my eyes burned out, my flesh peeled, my heart pierced in martyrdom, imitating the heroic deeds recounted nightly at monastic table through readings from Butler's Lives of the Saints.

Yet, I admitted, what truly baffled me was that in the monastery I knew what they were trying to do to me. They were forming me, directing me, sculpting my soul, and I accepted that. But in prison? I assumed prison would be the monastery on dark-side steroids—a continual attack on my behavior and attitude, an atmosphere of constant threat of physical violence, often sexual, and incessant demands to renounce my folly and sins and return to the straight and narrow. It was all of that—but that was just the Inside's surface reality. I confess that what I learned was something unexpected, more deeply disturbing—It almost killed me!—that prison was a never-ending sinuous pathway into the darkest depths of the Shadow realm where only subhumanity is present.

Mother(s) on the Inside

When I spoke about my subhuman experience in prison, the concerned reaction was often, "Was it worth it?" I knew that this meant, Were you scared? Did someone try to kill you? Most everyone had watched cop or prison TV "reality" shows where armed men pace the cellblock perimeter keeping at bay the tattooed, often toothless low-lives who snarl from their cages. I'd admit, "Sure. I was scared every second, awake, and asleep." But what would catch them off guard was my insight about how my mother and the Shadow Mother both made clear to me what being fully human—a "real human person"—required. Like any one-bodied person they looked at me quizzically. "Shadow Mother?" Convincing them that She was really there and that they had to meet Her was the challenge of my lifetime.

I realized that most of the activists were like me in several respects, either white male or educated or from middle-class homes. Many had been activists during their pre-college years. I asked them to analyze the import of the fact that as highly educated and/or white males and/or middle-class, none of our life stories was supposed to, or would ever, include an Inside chapter. We were from the Captor class, practicing Captor Visions, a one-bodied Dominion driven vision of the world. We were Captors whether we were conscious of it or not.

I challenged them to plumb the depth of this fact: Only when my Shadow Mother forced me to embrace my subhumanness did I become fully present in my own humanity. More, only because She did so was I able to grasp my twice-bodiedness. Now I taunted them, "Look at me. Do you see Francis Kroncke? Do you see 8867-147?" Inevitably asked, I'd talk further about how Francis himself came to see 8867-147.

I recounted how She kept me alive but let me suffer. How I felt my name, Francis, drain away like blood from a fatal wound. How I walked into the visiting room—seconds after having my bunghole inspected—and was slowly tortured by the piercing knife of sweet words from my family that cut out my heart because we were forbidden to hug and kiss and be held within a nurturing embrace. Then I described how prison institutionalizes the Shadow. Here I recounted the Pathway #2 "soon absent" story about my then widowed mother's visit.

I asked them not to think about what I was saying and so effect an emotional distance but rather just feel the story. I suggested that they close their eyes and sit for a moment or so with a memory of King's "unearned sufferings" which I translated into "a time when you got whacked or dissed just because of who you were and not for what you did." Could they empathize rather than sympathize? I hoped that they would begin to feel a bit subhuman. So I took them into the Inside's visiting room, one again telling them about my mom and Mother. How her hearing, "You can't do that!" shouted at her made her jump in her seat. That when her hand brushed my knee, she was admonished, "No touching!" I described the guard glaring threateningly, and how she cowered and gasped. What type of world is prison, I asked, if this was the rule: "One kiss when you meet, one when you leave." I paused and asked: "Would you like I did embody your subhuman heart and stab the guard to death, if not with a knife then with hatred?" I admitted: I did the latter.

I asked, "What was my mother's unearned suffering?" I answered that she was being abused and degraded, treated subhumanly because of me, simply for visiting me Inside. "For being a good Christian," I joked, quoting, I was in prison and you visited me, "from Matthew somewhere." I didn't mince words and admitted that I acted like the subhuman that prison wanted me to be, and I acted as my Captor would, with hatred and violence. Right there before mom's eyes I became a Captor of my Captive self.

Inevitably someone asked, "What's the point of this story?" I stated that I did not grasp the import of that visit until ten or fifteen years later. I didn't want to depress them but I had to emphasize that moving out of the Shadow realm can take a long stretch of calendar time, for me, here, decades. Yet, this question enabled me to describe how my Mom's actions effected her self-transformation from being mother to Earth Mother. I stated that at the instant Mom heard the Shadow Father's command, for a mythic nanosecond she recoiled from me, joining Him and the Shadow Mother in accepting my 8867-147 subhumanness, abandoning me to my suffering. But then she rebounded and mothered me in such a way that she embodied the Mother Goddess of all subhumans. With only momentary hesitation, she delicately took my hand, raised it to her lips, and kissed my fingertips, whispering, "Francis, I love you."

Although Mom knew I was suffering and living in the Shadow realm, she entered it to be with me, an act of love that affirmed my humanness. Her kiss exposed the Shadow truth that I was not human—could not become a real human person—unless and until a personal Other became intimate with me by embracing me in my Shadow subhuman state, called me forth by name, touched me, and made me feel precious. Like Gordy, the Marine's earlier proclamation, her kiss confirmed that I was not a gook but a person. Reflecting upon her kiss I was awakened to the insight that to become either subhuman or human required the creation of a heartfelt relationship wherein the Other is rendered either enemy or beloved. Even more radically insightful was my discovery that to experience my belovedness required that I embrace my own subhumanness.

_Note well:_ Although it was over a decade later before I fully realized what had happened on this Inside visit, once felt so my whole body changed: I became a real human person. Awake! My mother's visit was when I first felt truly beloved—as she embraced me, her subhuman son. Again, following the upside-down logic of the Shadow realm, intimacy was so utterly absent in prison, my body so numb, all was so dark, that on this occasion I felt nurtured, embraced, precious, and loved with a passion quite disturbing. For the first time I realized that I could truly give unconditional love to a personal Other—to my own Shadow Other, my subhuman me! Following my mother's example, I embraced my subhumanity and thereby connected with all that could potentially become human. This, I stated was what had to happen for one to emerge out of the Earthpeople vision into the Earthfolk vision.

Inside: the realm of personal intimacy

As I recounted my prison days, I realized that it was during this visiting room Shadow moment when everything human was soon absent that I had simultaneously sensed, through my mother's intimate presence, that I was precious and beloved and so, for the first time, understood what prison was all about. This moment revealed what prison sought to hide—that on the Inside, in the realm of the Shadow, I had found the way to become a real human person, that is, through intimate embrace.

Truly, I had walked around the Shadow realm, trekking directly ahead and—Awake!— discovered myself in the Mobius dimension of the Sunlight. My life experience got stood on its head through grasping this Shadow secret of the Inside, that it is the realm of personal intimacy. Prison is the place where everything is stripped away from you, all pretense, all clever self-illusions, and you are confronted with not just your physically naked but your exposed intimate self. I realized this sense of acutely vulnerable, almost innocent personal intimacy as I encountered myself as a Shadow subhuman. I discerned that intimacy actually defines the essence of the Shadow realm and so that discovering intimacy is a "soon absent" Shadow experience. In brief, I became fully me only when I embraced and integrated my personal and intimate selves—by embracing myself humanly and subhumanly so did I rise. Once I realized this, I began to live twice-named as both personal "Francis" and intimate "8867-147." I blossomed as a real human person.

As Mom had with me, so I had to embrace myself as the least, the scum of the Earth, society's offal, the Church's demon—not just as personal enemy but as an intimate enemy. I realized that as Mom had entered mine, so I must enter into the Shadow intimacy of Others and have them enter mine. Not just our personal space where we might become friends, even lovers, but into the depths of our Shadow selves where I embrace your subhumanness as I reveal my own. To be fully human we must receive one another as precious and beloved. As such, we become no longer personal or intimate enemies but make real Lennon's "brotherhood of man."

So, although totally unimaginable by pre-prison one-body me, it was when I was Inside—that place of no direction or location, where I could not be found, where "lost" has no connotation—that I experienced myself as Shadow Mother/Father, a twice-bodied person. Being Inside was a gut check at the cellular and cosmic levels. Amazingly, it was when "soon absent" that I sensed myself as you—in this darkness there was no distance, separation, or alienation, rather there was the presence of you. Not just the presence of me, but of you, the Other, the alien, the gook, the one supposedly invisible in the darkness—it was you who was me. This I felt cellularly, sensing my blood flow through you and me simultaneously. Likewise, I soared to the sky and outer space and was one with all light, all that was visible. I saw you in your distinctiveness and I beheld you as precious and beloved.

Here was my message to my grandchildren: Once I embraced myself in the Shadow's "soon absent" sector as subhuman, only then could I ascend into the Sunlight and make present myself a precious Other, one deserving to be celebrated as a beloved. Only then could I proclaim my: "I am an Earthfolk."

_Earthfolk._ It was clear, everyone can become an Earthfolk. You can descend into your "soon absent" and rise to be beheld as precious and beloved, everyday. You have "unearned sufferings." You can intimately embrace. Each day you can make present yourself as Mother and Father of the one family of humankind.

Imagining a New World

Since religious traditions and/or theological discourse did not source my grandchildren's activist movements, this intellectual difference between us compelled me to listen harder to what was not being articulated about how these activists were navigating their way through these social justice movements while not losing their minds and spirits. What was their intellectual or emotional glue? What was the source of their idealistic strength?

Their imagery and language provided clues. Being Earth-centered most did not use traditional otherworldly language such as "natural versus supernatural." As Lennon sang, "Imagine there's no Heaven / It's easy if you try / No hell below us / Above us only sky." Rather than being religious, their spirited words were visionary and imaginative. Their ventures into the Shadow realm were not battles with supernatural demons but rather with the injustices of the human heart. They acted justly but not because they wanted to be saved or because they feared a hell. They shared Lennon's vision: "Imagine all the people / Living for today." They were knit together by a heartfelt passion that arose from their interactions with others around the world. They knew that whatever one person did regarding a justice issue affected everyone on the planet. They were Earthpeople on the verge of emerging as Earthfolk.

I sensed their essential Earthfolk character because as happened with me in prison on the tip of their collective tongue was "Mother." Although they mainly spoke of "Mother Earth" (and not "goddess Mother") they breathed Her name with the same loving voice that my mother used and sealed with her kiss. As my mother embodied the Great Mother in touching my subhumanness, so when these youths proclaimed "Mother Earth," they were emerging as Earthfolk declaring themselves and all others precious and beloved.

For them Lennon's plea to "Imagine there's no countries" was more than a geographical, cultural or political quest; it was personal and intimate. They felt ecologically that everyone and everything was One in body, heart and spirit. They were not only Earthpeople's global citizens but Earthfolk's global family, each thinking globally and acting locally as they imagined "living life in peace."

"Imagine all the people / sharing all the world." These emerging Earthfolk were members of the one tribal family of the living Earth. They discerned that She is alive, Mother Earth and soon came to proclaim Her as our goddess Mother, consort of Father Sky, our god Father. Again, this was not supernatural, otherworldly language about deities—it was expressive visionary language that imagined what humans may fully become. It asserted that each of us is a precious child of the loving, familial presence which we each embody when we behold every person as precious and beloved.

In time, four themes surfaced as foundational to the emerging Earthfolk vision. (1) Confronting the Nuclear Age's deep cultural fear by living in a nonviolent way that affirms the preciousness of all human beings and life-forms. (2) Refusing to identify and name the Other as enemy, instead embracing the Other as family. (3) Celebrating Earth as the living presence of the Mother Goddess (the feminine), while bringing forth a life-affirming presence of the Father God (a new masculine). And, (4) rejecting the supposed inevitability of the apocalyptic story of self-annihilation—Poof!—committing instead to simple living and building the Earth as one home for the one family of all humankind.
Chapter 13: Imagining the Earthfolk

Earthfolk Revolution

Some campus activists sharply criticized the "institutionalization of protest" which they felt actually sabotaged the rise of the Earthfolk vision. They pointed out that an unintended consequence of establishing academic departments and programs such as peace studies, Black studies, women's studies, and so forth, was that political protesting quite often ceased upon graduation. Unhappily, just as in my youth, for many student activists their participation in social justice movements was campus based—and confined. While young activists might espouse the Earthfolk vision while in school, how could they sustain the vision later on? Was Earthfolk a new mythic story of origin just for idealistic young folk or was it for all people everywhere? Was it significant that we lacked a national political party that advocated Resist! and challenged the Earthpeople vision? Were off-campus activists fated to life in the mainstream where they would, inevitably, embody Lone Male values and ways of operating—"grow up" and just settle with being Earthpeople? I urged them to listen to Lennon and hear his truly radical call to "Imagine"!

I stressed: Isn't Lennon's vision of "living life in peace" grounded in the challenge that "the personal is political"? You are personally challenged to live without religion, possessions, and nationalism. Don't be greedy, share the planet! Isn't "Imagine" a call to explore your intimacy—encounter your Shadow subhuman self and stay focused on Shadow work? Doesn't the paralyzing grip of the Lone Male Shadow Father's patriarchal religion weaken as you embrace the Shadow Mother and so embody the "nothing to kill or die for" familial love of the Great Mother and Great Father? Doesn't living without possessions require "sharing all the world" as you subordinate national identity and celebrate the world-wide-web of life?

"You may say I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one." Not the only one: Chante Wolf, a "Veterans for Peace" leader, notably from the first Iraqi war, with some of us old peace activists and Resisters toured regional campuses as part of the PWH project. By sharing their "soon absent" wartime experiences, Chante and other vets brought the Earthfolk message to their campus peers just as Gordy had to me. Although not using my Shadow and Sunlight imagery, they spoke across the socio-economic-academic divide about their deep Shadow battlefield experiences and related to Gordy's phrase: "not a gook but a person." Chante, without fail, brought every room and crowd to complete silence as she recounted her and other sister-soldier's sexual violence experiences while in the war zone. Other male and female members of various chapters of "Iraqi Veterans Against the War" described how they were dealing with their Shadow realm experiences and working to become Great Mothers and Fathers. In so many ways the testimony and witness of these war veterans catalyzed and inspired my grandchildren more than any of my or other elders' stories.

Not the only one: Equally powerful was PWH's "Woman and War" program that was led by two nationally prominent dissident women: Ann Wright, an Army colonel (retired) and Coleen Crowley, a former FBI agent. In a way that I as a male could not reach some female activists, their careers demonstrated that if women were willing to live as Shadow Mothers (biblical Sarahs) and act in concert with the Shadow Fathers then they could succeed and be promoted to the highest ranks. Yet once they rebelled and acted as Great Mothers, each was dismissed. Both publicly opposed the illegality of the Iraq invasion and also blew the whistle on illegal acts committed in the conduct of the invasion

Not the only one: Some activists joined me for the "Minnesota 8 Celebration" evening that kicked off the play's opening night. Several hundred gathered to honor those who had resisted their generational wars and to listen to their stories. Older activists handed out awards to the current generation. We honored peacemaking veterans, resisters, raiders, organizers, lawyers, scientists, public officials, teachers, and families. We celebrated our history of Resist!ance but more we celebrated ourselves as a peacemaking family.

That night I reconnected with Rob Senden, a draft resister who had served time with me. We had rented a house together during my first year on parole. Soon after this evening, Rob introduced me to "The Mankind Project," a thirty-year-old movement that initiates men into manhood. This group offered another way for men and women of all ages to enter the Shadow realm and develop a new Sunlight story.

Not the only one: After the play and PWH's closure, I went on The Mankind Project's "New Warrior Training Adventure" which was an experiential weekend that enables a man to explore and work on his Shadow. You are shown how to become a Shadow warrior—a healer, not a predator. I took the training with thirteen other men, ages 23 to 72, and was profoundly moved as I entered the Shadow realm, shared my subhuman self as intimate enemy, and was held as precious and beloved. My brothers embraced me and called me forth by my New Warrior name.

I was pleased to learn that across the globe other organizations like The Mankind Project regularly meet in local groups to deepen and act upon their personal growth. The Mankind Project itself has programs for adolescents ("Boys to Men") and couples. Similarly, for women there are the affiliated projects of "Woman Within" and "Empowered Girl Alliance," and the unaffiliated "Women in Power." Then—as now—I encouraged men and women of all ages to explore these projects that enable you to encounter your Shadow subhuman self.

But beyond all these programs, at the core of the Earthfolk vision is the need for the simple willingness to engage in a revolution within: willingness to see and embrace your own Shadow and that of others, and ultimately, willingness to be changed—to live differently, and let the world be changed because of us.

Not the only one: My request is that you respond to Lennon's invitation, "I hope someday you'll join us," and sound the depths of the Earthfolk revolution that echoes throughout "Imagine."

The challenge to embody the vision

As happy as I was with the play, PWH, and the Celebration, with so many inspiring discussions and events, I had to confront my own sense of failure. It was linked to, "How can I live "Imagine" and Resist! when off-campus in the workaday world?" While I had opened insights into the Inside and the Shadow I had to admit that I was caught short when trying to answer, "What does an Earthfolk person do?" I just felt that I had not said enough about how to live everyday as an Earthfolk—in fact, I realized that I didn't have all that worked out.

The question asked for practical answers, for ways to embody being an Earthfolk. My PWH message had been encouraging these activists to "live as if you are no one's enemy." That was okay, but there had to be more. I felt that I was leaving them with a cup not even one-tenth full. More work had to be done. Like it or not, I would have to go back Inside my own "soon absent" Shadow realm to listen, once again, to prison's terrible revelation.

Prison's Terrible Revelation

Prison's terrible revelation—that Shadow injustices would not be righted until I personally embraced my subhumanness and made myself present as Shadow Father and Mother. Okay. I had understood and emphasized that point over and over. What was missing? _Awake!_ One simple word—everyday. Okay. I had to laugh at myself a bit. This simple insight took me back to my days in the monastery where the quest was to be in the presence of God every minute of every day. This was achieved through ritual practices. Ha. Was I coming full circle into the world of Friar Otto? Okay. That was partly true, but the real insight came when I reflected upon the fact that my commitment to nonviolence had been inspired by Teilhard de Chardin (on Pathway #1).

Teilhard had given me a pre-computer age sense of the world-wide-web of the human heart. He saw the Earth as living and as having a psychic sphere called the Noosphere and a sacred sphere called the Christosphere enveloping it. This perspective was linked to the reality that the mind is not the brain but without the brain there is no mind! If the Earth were living then these two spheres must exist. I accepted that. This vision had inspired my nonviolence as it made me aware that every one of my personal actions had an impact on every other person linked through the Noosphere. Time and again as I resisted and nonviolently demonstrated I sensed the global impact of my individual action. In a way, the judge's thundering condemnation: You strike at the foundation... illustrated my point. As the Quakers proclaim, when I "spoke truth to power" the world was transformed.

Although I was no longer on campus, I realized that my message to young and old was, "Daily, you must enter the Shadow realm and embrace yourself as subhuman. You cannot simply remain an advocate protesting the unjust treatment of subhumans." This would be an effective, practical act that transformed the world. Transformed? Yes, this was true not only from the Noospheric perspective but because of the Inside experience I had in the "soon absent" that when you make yourself present as a subhuman so are you one with all Other humans. For me this was a Wow! moment. I had never connected the Noosphere to the Shadow realm. Now it all seemed so clear and so self-evident—in Shadow as in Sunlight every individual on the planet is every other individual. We are all one, bonded in our sufferings and our celebrations.

_Discovery:_ Entering your Shadow/Sunlight realm of personal intimacy, everyday, is the core Earthfolk practice that will transform the world.

Nevertheless, I knew that entering the Shadow realm and meeting one's own subhumanness cannot be consciously done, like flipping an on/off switch. There is no place anyone can go where it automatically happens, not even on prison's Inside. There is no starting line for the Shadow realm, but there are ways to prepare, practices to engage. Here Martin Luther King's approach to understanding how "unearned sufferings" serve to transform a person's heart and soul proved once again both insightful and useful. His words are worth re-reading:

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. ("I have a dream")

Everyone and every living thing has unearned sufferings, such as suffering because you are born gay, or the suffering of an innocent noncombatant maimed by an invader, or of dying pelicans slicked with oil.

As I had learned on Pathway #1 that the draft board and on Pathway #2 the Inside were ritual zones, so I knew that to embody the Earthfolk vision I would have to develop rituals and practices of intimacy.

Human bodies as ritual instruments of intimacy

Unintentionally, the biblical Shadow sad stories gave me the insight that the realm of intimacy—me embracing you—was where "it was all happening," that is, where reality is envisioned and made manifest; where the creative action lies. The clue was that when Adam and Eve became intimate the whole Lone Male patriarchal world went bonkers. When physically naked this couple experienced something they were not supposed to intuit or sense. They felt, shared, and were transformed through intimate embrace—they experienced what I term "coupled presence." More, they realized that the creative life force was expressed and manifested as they brought their bodies into sexual communion. In my terms, Adam and Eve—the male and the female; me and you—discovered that their bodies were ritual instruments of intimacy.

My quest: I had to discover, explore, celebrate, suffer, that is, totally sense your intimacy so as to sense my own. Only as we two become one and so make ourselves present each to the other as a real human person can we then dissemble and dwell peacefully and comfortably at home together. Let me use some candle imagery to capture this insight. Like two candle flames that merge to form a novel oneness so did Adam and Eve discover themselves as Life's creators—the definition of being a real human person. As the flames separate, the male and female, you and me, are once again distinct. From this perspective, Adam and Eve violated what would be expressed through the Abrahamic First Commandment—they discovered their godness, their divinity, their life creativity...and they adored one another, that is, they beheld one another as precious and beloved. At that moment there was no static dualistic distinction between being human and being divine. Divine and human, like the two candle flames, merged through intimate embrace and the novel thirdness of Life itself in personal face emerged. For this sin, sacrilege, blasphemy, however termed, their Father god jumped right into their faces, raged violently, and kicked them out of the house.

I took all this to mean that the biblical Lone Male vision was tethered to the intimate zone but just as the Shadow realm was, that is, from a point of denial. Awake! For the Lone Male there is and should not be intimacy as there is and should not be Shadow. Consequently, to start re-visioning I had to explore my intimacy because it was there—as embracing Adam and Eve revealed—that the vision and experience of being a real human person arises.

For me this negative biblical insight into intimacy quickly translated into secular terms as I discerned that the secular West, through America's entry into the Shadow realm as Earth-America, had created a weapon of mass destruction that was at its core a destroyer of intimacy. The Atomic Bomb went Poof! and obliterated intimacy as everything human was soon absent since nothing human remained at any level of meaning. Why, I asked myself, was this weapon created? Simply to achieve a military objective? Or was it more properly understood as a mythic weapon that was intended to redefine what it meant to be human, that is, inspire a new story of origin where "in the beginning" was nothing but a whorl of atomic tidbits? In this light, the Bomb just returned everything Lone Male full circle to the biblical theological revelation that states that humans were not born but created—creatio ex nihilo. Here, once again, we humans are motherless children and, in essence, subhumans.

So, when Earthfolk intimately embrace they are, by that act, ritually moving away from the biblical story of origin that sources Earthpeople globalization and are making manifest the Earthfolk story of origin. Every day, through ritual embrace, Earthfolk make present Mother and Father in Shadow and Sunlight. It is our Divine Parents, made present through our actions, who are our guides to how the globalization movement should unfold.

Invitation to practice Earthfolk rituals with a personal Other

As has been my approach on these Pathways I ground my Outlaw Visions in gut experiences. I am always ready to describe and share my personal experiences, experiments, and rituals. Now I'd like to invite you to engage several Earthfolk rituals and practices. However, to shift the spotlight onto you, I present this invitation as if I were responding to your request about how to proceed.

First off, don't rush into all of this without weighing the risks. Be aware: I am asking you to engage a set of practices and rituals that stand to turn your life upside down as you discover your second body—your subhuman self. I hope by now that you know that my story and the Earthfolk vision isn't some shallow intellectual fantasy like some New Age airy-fairy type blather. I'm not going to ask you to practice some touchy-feely feel-good exercises. Rather I am going to invite you to do something that no one else has ever asked you to do, that is, voluntarily and consciously approach entering the Shadow realm by tapping into the primal emotions of your unearned sufferings.

I want you to begin experiencing the world as a subhuman—the Other as enemy, gook, bitch. I am hoping that you will then "skin yourself alive," that is, embody the Earthfolk vision and begin to dwell peacefully and comfortably at home on the Living Earth. Last word: If you haven't blotted the blood spots on the pages or not been repelled by the fetid odor of my bowels emptied by a raging fear throughout these accounts, then you've missed the boat. Go toss this book into a trashcan!

Yet other than write this book there is nothing I can do to or for you from here on out. Okay, that's not exactly true. I am an Other who is inviting you but I am not your personal beloved. At the right time you will be challenged to embody prison's terrible revelation that to become a real human person you need a beloved with whom to engage in evoking a coupled presence. But let's start with some preparatory practices.

Creating an Earthfolk ritual zone

The first step is to practice "living as if I am no one's enemy" for say three months. This is a period where you seriously and patiently become present to yourself. Do this by yourself before inviting someone into your ritual zone. You will inevitably confront a lot of upsetting Lone Male thoughts, images, and feelings during this practice. It will prove useful to keep a notebook or a journal.

It is key that you create your own private Earthfolk zone for imagining and practicing. To make it a personal safe space for yourself, set some boundaries by sitting on a small rug and/or making a border with candles or whatnot. If you're in a place not of your choosing, such as solitary confinement or other like inhospitable locale, then vividly imagine yourself in such a zone. Place, where you can clearly see them, the two icons of the Lone Male: the Mushroom Cloud and Earthrise. Design or at least imagine this ritual zone as an elliptic space, an oval that has two foci.

Sunlight you is one focal point and the other point is also you but it is the Shadow you that the Lone Male wants to obliterate, that is, your Mother goddess/feminine self. This holds equally true for males and females. Remember, to become a real human person you need your

Shadow and Sunlight male and female presences to mingle. Your goal is to mingle them like two candle flames merging and making a third flame present, namely, yourselves as precious and beloved. As an aid, place something on that Shadow focal point, like a candle or even a picture of yourself. Just something that reminds you that you are not yet fully present to your subhuman self.

If you already have such a ritualizing safe zone and it is festooned with flowers, stimulated by cleansing smoking herbs, and a comfort to you on your journeying that's an added plus.

With this preparatory creation of a safe ritual zone you are ready to practice "living as if I am no one's enemy."

Earthfolk rituals and practices with your Shadow Other

The necessity of a beloved Other(s)

Prison's vision is "Do your own time!" with an emphasis on your own. Getting across the deeper meaning of this simple command continues to be critical to my providing anyone with a way to value and then enter their Shadow realm. This is the other side of prison's terrible revelation: You need the Other to become you! Isn't this becoming more evident, that there are two Others to embrace. First, your subhuman self must embrace your human self and vice versa as beloveds. Second, you must embrace a personal Other, sharing your Shadow and Sunlight stories, and so beholding one another as precious and beloved.

Embracing your own Other requires that you start practicing "living as if I am no one's enemy." After mastering this practice, embracing a personal Other can be approached through several practices and rituals. One, described below, is to replicate the encounter I had with my mother as she became Great Mother during the prison visit where the Hack momentarily had her slip into her role as Shadow Mother.

Here's where the Atom Bomb's violation of human dignity through vaporization, an act that revealed that its purpose was to obliterate human intimacy, merged with the Inside revelation that I had to stop doing my own personal time and start doing mythic time. I had to un-Adjust myself which meant integrating my subhuman and human selves and so live with the body of a real human person, that is, live mythically as One with the Earthfolk. If I could embody myself as an Earthfolk I would live and sense the world quite differently than an Earthpeople does. I would practice living as if I was no one's enemy which meant approaching every Other I met as a potential intimate beloved. Doing this releases a vital energy that is not even fully described by the word Love, and I received in return a sense of emotional fulfillment which is not even fully described by the word Peace. Those terms come across as a bit too static. Let me just say that my presence was better described as juicy. I felt alive as if juiced by the ripeness of life itself, by the electric thrill much like lightning in a raging storm, like what I've felt during a moment of heart-stopping insight when "Aha!" blows me away. When I meet you and we open ourselves intimately, juices flow and life throbs.

The practice of living as if I am no one's enemy

Can you accept that your psyche is deeply embedded within the Lone Male story of origin that has you gripped in a dreadful fear of the Other as intimate enemy? As referenced before, the biblical story of origin (source to Western secularism and scientism) has you feeling hated, despised, rebuked, yelled out, cursed, and cast out of paradise. You are a "wretch like me!" You need "amazing grace" or else you will burn forever in the furnace of hell. In the secular variant, you are just an evolutionary blip, a worthless epiphenomenon. Essentially, you are just a puff of inorganic atoms—Poof! How else to feel when hearing these stories then dreadfully fearful? This fear determines how biblical and Western people think. And they react in the self-harming way that those suffering from post-traumatic stress do—hyper-vigilant fear.

Intimately embracing this dreadfully fearful you is what living as no one's enemy is all about. It takes a lot of guts and often a fair amount of practice time to really, truly and deeply live this way. It happens when you embrace yourself as a subhuman: Other, scum, piece of shit, "acceptable collateral damage"...and meld that with your human story and let the new vision of you as an Earthfolk emerge—nurtured and flowering from the well of your sense of yourself as precious and beloved.

Just know that to move away from the Lone Male vision puts you at a certain risk. To practice "living as if I am no one's Enemy" immediately throws you into the Lone Male's Shadow realm. Remember, the Lone Male wants to obliterate the Shadow realm...and all who inhabit it! Only you can weigh the risks of continuing to live as a Lone Male and sustain the imagination which will inevitably make present the nuclear holocaust, or you can choose to practice "living as if I am no one's Enemy."

"Living as if I am no one's enemy" is the fundamental practice of living nonviolently. We Earthfolk understand nonviolence as a way of creatively channeling and making whole and precious the violent imagination and actions of the Lone Male. We accept that Others will thrust us into the deepest darkest sectors of the Shadow realm as they name us as enemy but it is our Sunlight commitment to always state to an Other that we do not honor or accept that name. We imagine everyone as beloved and seek to respectfully embrace them to make present the beauty and bountifulness of his or her preciousness. We recognize evil Shadow imaginings and actions and immediately and actively strive to resist both while always proclaiming all involved as precious beloveds. We employ imagery and language that expresses another's preciousness and honors her/him as a beloved. We practice rituals that enable preciousness to arise within the embrace of coupled beloveds where every human sense is honored as a way of enabling a couple to make present their preciousness and live a fully human life as twice-bodied. We actively and consciously explore our own dark side or inner shadow to discern and embody our Shadow subhumanness and so burst forth into the Sunlight.

"Living as if I am no one's enemy" is first practiced by opening yourself to your own preciousness. This prepares you to open to an Other's preciousness. Right now that Other who is stranger, alien, enemy, possibly friend or even lover is yourself. Being open to your own preciousness is not a self-centered act in terms of narcissistic obsession, rather it is the exact opposite. It is opening yourself not only to give to an Other but to receive from them. Here, you practice being vulnerable to yourself. The courage that is involved is that you will now surrender the primal Lone Male emotion of self-hatred, that is, accepting yourself as a wretch, a sinner, a fallen soul, etc. You have been raised to be your own Intimate Enemy. Now you are to image yourself as and seek to feel precious and beloved.

Awake! You are all that Life has groaned, as Father and Mother, to bring to birth here on Earth. You are and have been loved every second of your existence. You are precious to Mother Earth and Father Sky, and you are a beloved child in the one human family. Sit, walk, rest, whatever, with these images and feelings: practice "living as if I am no one's enemy."

"Living as if I am no one's enemy" is the initiatory way to get-in-touch with the Earthfolk vision and imagination. As you experience your own preciousness, your desire to be present to an Other's preciousness will tantalize you!

Since the Shadow realm is nothing if not tricky, here's a word of advice: to keep yourself honest, start off by finding someone you trust and explain to them what you are seeking to discover from these Pathways. Use someone as a reality check. "Have I really changed?" "What do you think about this {thought, image, feeling, etc.}." If you really do affirm in your heart that the Lone Male has us both living in a world of predatory globalization and heading towards an apocalyptic time when more Atomic Bombs might be dropped, then you will persevere.

Reflect deeply on this: **"Your body is a ritual instrument of intimacy."** Just like the Atomic Bomb was a ritual instrument of intimacy. Just as prison was a ritual instrument of intimacy. So, let this idea and imagery seep into you—Embody your intimacy!

Creative intimacy

What happens when two beloveds experience a shared intimacy? Simply, the world is created, right now. We humans create the real, everyday, mundane and profane world through sharing our intimacy. If we seek not to share intimacy—to fear the Other as intimate enemy and not as beloved—we create the Lone Male Earthpeople world (re: Adam and Eve). At present this Lone Male world is rapidly expanding its Dominion over the Earth and all people. It is basically doing this through a relentless militarization of the foundations of society and culture.

The initiating and grounding Shadow act, then, is to reenact with a beloved, that is, a trusted Other who seeks the same intimate transformation, the essence of the encounter my mother and I shared in prison's visiting room, and through this act embody the Shadow Mother/Father. In brief, open by describing a time when you first learned about an injustice and positively responded to the call by the Shadow Father, for example, to approve a war crime invasion as a "necessary evil" or accept oil-slicked birds as "just business." Recall how you felt later when you realized that you had become His Shadow consort, as did my mother during her visit. Then reach out like my mother did and affirm your beloved Other's humanity and preciousness, and so open yourself to their affirming yours.

During this ritual time, let empathy move you both to touch and accept each other's subhumanness. This happens when you open your heart to your own unearned sufferings, when you acknowledge those moments when a Shadow Mother/Father abused, injured, violated, or humiliated you—abandoning you in the Shadow realm as a subhuman, intimate enemy. From within this shared anguish let your Other intimately touch you through sharing their own unearned sufferings. This heartfelt relationship enables each of you to experience yourself as intimate enemy and so discover your fuller humanity. In embracing yourself as the least, the despised, society's rubbish, so do the two of you embrace as beloveds, embodying the love of the Great Mother and Great Father and blossom as real human persons.

This practice makes you aware of your own subhumanness as you recognize the Shadow Mother and the Shadow Father within you. Encountering yourself as subhuman opens you to imagining yourself and others as fully human—to make everything human fully present. You will live as twice-bodied, actually sensing the world as a subhuman and so telling your sad story as part of imagining your glad story. This is the rhythmic structure of "Imagine." Then, these Shadow and Sunlight words, images, and actions inevitably stir ancient memories and enable you to experience yourself and Others as precious and beloved and so as siblings in one Family. Each of you are then present as Mother Earth and Father Sky and as child within the Earthfolk family. In this way, as Lennon says, "the world will live as one." This should get your juices flowing.

A few Earthfolk practices

For all these practices there is no pat script to read or rote act to emulate. Rather, and this is quite a challenge, how you practice living as if I am no one's enemy is something you must creatively develop, and it is a practice you must define and refine. For many, at first it is often a difficult psychological task just to master your wandering mind and attention. Your goal is to confront and bring to conscious awareness how you've been expressing the Lone Male imagination through your personal thoughts and acts: identifying the words you've been using, how you've been interacting with others, and how they really feel when you've been a Lone Male.

At other times it might be a visioning task akin to reciting a mantra. You image the Other as welcoming and invite them as you recite "I am not living as your enemy" time and again. Then in other moments you might prefer to surround yourself with images, pictures, posters, slogans, elements that you have cherished (like stones, cups of water, flowers) and situate them within an inviting and healing environment. However you set up, the objective is to have your Earthfolk zone permeated by Sunlight energy—a positive, affirming, loving heartfelt energy—as you prepare to open yourself to walking into the Shadow realm (using the Mobius image, again, of walking from the Sunlight and soon appearing into the Shadow realm).

Time is not as important as is effort. Fifteen or thirty minutes, an hour: it's all the same. As you sit there, much like in a meditation or guided visualization moment, focus on the icons and let them stir up Lone Male dreadful fear. Now anticipate that this reflective practice will stir up bad memories, painful emotions, and bum you out! If you can, jot down notes or journal entries or somehow express yourself to create both memories and materials for future practice moments. Depending upon your talents you might create a ditty or a joke or dance a bit; just Do it!

You'll know that you are making progress when you start getting frustrated, then angry, then eager to move forward.

When you enter your Shadow realm you are quite often forced—possibly for the first time ever—to consciously confront your own Shadow self, your subhuman you. Surprise! You realize how much a Lone Male you, yourself, have been and are!

_Note:_ The Earthfolk website at http://www.earthfolk.net presents a complementary approach to developing daily rituals and practices.

_Practice A_ : To get to "living as if" requires first getting to feeling "living as the enemy Other." It will boggle your mind but try mightily to feel what it must be like to be vaporized—Poof! Then look at the icon of Starship Earth. Let it settle in as a militarized image—sense yourself as Intimate Enemy. Sense that the Lone Male has you surrounded—even from outer space! Hopefully, these icons will disturb you, make you uneasy, open your mind and heart to Lone Male terror.

If you've attempted to name and honor the Mother goddess, you might have already experienced the horrified reaction of Lone Male Father god worshippers—Pagan! Witch! Satanic worshipper!

If you've attempted to honor the feminine within yourself—homo, queer, lesbian, fag, degenerate, wimp...words not said as compliments.

If you've protested against the abuse and rape of Mother Earth...tree huggers, naive romantics, eco-terrorists, Earth-motherfuckers...words of fear, dreadful fear, that name you as an Intimate Enemy.

If you've struggled for civil rights, for human rights...idealist, unAmerican, not patriotic, fool's errand!—and any list of racist, sexist or marginalizing rants, curses {Nigger lover! Queer! Commie! Jew lover! Traitor! Pervert!}

Hear yourself say to yourself, "I live as if I am no one's enemy!"

Open to being peacefully and comfortably at-home within this Earthfolk zone. Be patient with yourself. You are re-imagining yourself. In effect re-wiring your physical, mental, and emotional make-up. Persevere.

_Practice B_ : As deeply and for as long as you can, call to mind how you live out the Lone Male imagination and even how you are presently ritualizing it. Take some time to reflect upon the Lone Male ritual structure of your life, that is, examine one or several ways that you ritually act out your mythic, cultural, social, familial, and/or personal stories in terms and actions concerning an Other. For example, if relevant, examine the mythic ritual of being a battlefield warrior. Or a citizen who shuns the Shadow realm and has no contact with subhumans. Or one who engages female bodies basically as pornographic sex toys, not as making present the Mother goddess.

Try to connect the dots from the mythic to the cultural, e.g., what words and images predominate when you—man or woman—speak to women at home or in the office or in the church, synagogue or temple? What are your social rituals with Others? Do you socialize with women—"Some of my best friends are {women, gays, blacks, etc.}." Really? What do you think and say when you have to relate to those considered Other as gook or subhuman? Are these Others truly part of your social space and time? When your family gathers how do people move around in the home space? Is there respect for and equal treatment of all around the table? Finally, just notice all these things and see how they impact your rituals of intimacy. Is your body a ritual instrument of intimacy? Or are you engaged, in varying degrees, in war-between-the-sexes practices?

_Practice C_ : Often it is good to prepare by engaging or even making the main focus of your reflection the insights about Genesis as a mythic ritual as discussed on Pathway#2. Read Genesis 1-3 and recall that as mythic ritual Genesis moves the male to be in the presence of the female and not see her. It moves a woman to be in the presence of a man subordinating herself and being submissive to him because he is her Master, under his Dominion. At times she walks an actual or symbolic step behind him. This mythic story moves you to strip naked but then hear the revelation that the zone of human intimacy is a Shadow area, the playground of demons, even an Original Sin. You hear that sexual acts often offend the Father who judges them evil and kicks you out of the house—here sense yourself as exiled from the Garden of Eden.

The Rib account has you ritually processing around the Garden looking for Her—Mother!—only to hear it chanted, "I am the Lord they God thou shalt have no other gods before me." No other gods meaning especially goddesses. Say, "I am a motherless child!" Sense the grounding emotion of the Rib's ritual as one of abandonment, of being bereft of a Mothering embrace. It is a ritual that grounds you in feeling subhumanly, that is, feeling at your core that you are created, not born. As such Genesis is the ritual that renders all human creatures as less than human. It is a mythic ritual that moves you deep down into the darkest sector of the Garden's Shadow realm where everything human is soon absent...and abandons you there, for eternity.

Tap into being motherless. A child abandoned. More, cursed! Hearing, "You have no mother! You are not human. You're just a piece of shit!" Hear and feel what those Inside have heard all their lives: "You're nothing but a worthless {asshole, nigger, gook, bitch, faggot, red devil, whore, pussy...}!"

_Practice D_ : Guys especially should not just dip their toes into the water. If you don't feel the dark grip of the Lone Male on your body, mind and heart, well, you're not really practicing very hard. If you're having difficulty stirring things up then stand up, jog in place, chant "Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Die all you motherfuckers!" Rev up the Lone Male emotions and hear this Boot Camp chant fly off your lips...and then stop as suddenly as you can and just listen to the echoing of this chant, just let your heart race and feel the energy that seeks to find and savagely abuse the Other. Let this happen for a bit and, as it does, become the Other.

Bring your Lone Male imagination and emotion to the forefront. Taste the loneliness, anger, bitterness, hatred! Feel the pain of being cursed, homeless, a disposable piece of human trash! Imagine the unimaginable—you as a vaporous puff of atoms, a charcoal shadow on a wall! Just let happen what happens. Be bewildered, if that happens. Be uncomfortable. Laugh. Cry. Whatever.

In time, close your eyes and imagine yourself walking down a busy street in the flow of a crowd. As you walk reflect: I am alone. I am not loved. I am hated. You are not my sisters and brothers. You are all my enemy! I am your enemy! Soon you will hear: I am not alone. I am loved. I am not hated. You are my brothers and sisters. You are not my enemy. I am not your enemy.

_Practice E:_ Rung stories—descending into the Shadow realm

My advice is **not** to work with the Rung #3 stories until you've been doing daily practice sessions for a year or so. Simply, it was hard enough for you to read them, yes? And if you've ventured to read Appendix A's Rung #3 stories, then you know how disturbing they are, so you've got to be well prepared to use them. That said, here is how you can use Rung #1 and #2 stories.

Within your safe Earthfolk zone, settle down and works towards a steady, rhythmic breathing in and out. Draw upon the strengthening energy of "I live as if I am no one's enemy!" Relax your body. Let the embrace of Mother and Father fill you will the courage to descend into the Shadow and ascend back up into the Sunlight.

The practice is to re-read the story and then re-imagine it by putting yourself into the narrative. Find a parallel storyline in your own life. Run through the story from both sides—switch being Captor and then Captive. Just remember to deeply feel your way through the story, just don't do mental gymnastics! Descend into the pit!

1. _Mafia and me_. See yourself walking through a park. You're deep into depression and despair as you've just lost your job, the mortgage is behind, and things with your wife are rocky. It seems like everything you've done in your life is falling apart. You've worked hard, went back and finished your degree, worked on weekends to get that little extra for the kids, and for your spouse. You're still in love, but these are trying times. A man walks up next to you. You can't see his face. It doesn't matter because his voice is hypnotic. "I can help. Straighten this all out, just like that," he clicks his fingers, "Trust me."

How he knew, you don't know, but he does, that you are a bookkeeper. "Just sign it. Put the letter on company letterhead. That's all." Pause. "You good with this?" Good? It's just a toe over the line, you say to yourself. You can see the Shadow on your ankle, but that quickly disappears as you see your wife's smile. She's almost giddy. She doesn't know how you've done it, and she hasn't asked.

What would it take to have you step over the line? How close to you is the Shadow world? Once in, do you think you would ever leave? Mafia Sal asks you: "What do you want?" Has your corruption ever corrupted another? Someone you love?

2. _Jesus Freak_. It's your little sister, again. Again? You're getting annoyed. "You've every right to be angry with her," others say. You don't want to recall that it was you who gave her her first toke of weed. What a mess! "I'm a junkie! There, I've said it." You hear the abandonment in her voice. She's asking for absolution. Pleading for...for what? Maybe I should feed her back to her own?

Have you been there? Actually thrown her back? Maybe it was alcohol or a sexual addiction? Can you feel yourself in her place sitting there, looking up at your eyes? What do you see? Are you worthy to be cast out into darkness?

3. _Gangs_. "Fraternity prank?" Remember how that stopped the cop in his tracks? "You're one sick rich kid," is what he said, and you knew he meant that you had no morals. You wanted to slap him, You motherfucking high school jock! But you didn't. Later, all the guys are talking. She asked for it. The little bitch was begging for it. You see yourself in the daisy chain. Guys' dongs flapping in the wind; some at high salute. She was moaning, of course, for pleasure, what else? She was over 17, so what's the big deal? When you dicked her she let you kiss her on the lips, so what does that say? She loved it!

How does the group—a gang, a fraternity—pressure you into doing things you'd never do on your own? How easy is it to treat someone subhumanly?

How to use the other Rung stories continues in _Appendix B_.

In time, you will begin to practice this with another person with whom you share respectful intimacy. Within the nurturing embrace of beloveds, the deep sensation of being held precious by another will heal and whole you. If you practice "living as if I am no one's enemy" with a beloved within an intimate embrace, the time will eventually appear right and ready for you to explore the Earthfolk practices that make manifest a "coupled presence." Awake! The timing is not of your choosing. Practicing manifesting a coupled presence begins with an invitation to you by a precious beloved. Persevere.

Coupled Presence

After practicing "living as if I am no one's enemy" and embodying down to Rung #3 experiences of their own Shadow, Earthfolk set forth to experience "coupled presence." When two Earthfolk achieve coupled presence they make present and manifest the Divine Couple, the Great Mother and Great Father, Mother Earth and Father Sky. From within their embrace is released the intimate energy that heals and makes whole the individual and communal body, mind and heart. It is this act of coupled presence that is source for the vision that counters the Earth-America's Lone Male Earthpeople vision for globalization through predatory and/or stewardship Dominion. The Earthfolk vision is the embodied vision of coupled presence, that is, to evoke this vision necessitates that two beloveds couple in intimate embrace. Where the Earthpeople vision is of a singular Chosen People and a quest of individual Heroes, the Earthfolk vision is one of a Living Earth and a quest of embracing beloveds.

The following are a select few of the practices and rituals that are used to evoke a coupled presence. These are, in a way, advanced practices and rituals; ones that will "work" for you at the time when you are ready. These are not rote practices that yield a result every time. Rather, these practices and rituals will always be specific to your experience of your own life, and your life unfolds to your own special and peculiar timing and rhythm. I present the following to stir your interest in moving forward to a deeper, quite ecstatic moment of coupled presence.

_Note_ : As mentioned, complementary Earthfolk rituals and practices to the following ones of Intending and the Obliterated Womb are presented at http://www.earthfolk.net

Practice of Intending

The practice of Intending is a consciously chosen way to approach an Other through inviting him/her into your intimacy. We Earthfolk live an intentional life. Every day opens and closes with acts of intending. Through these acts the depths of the preciousness of the Other, realized through engaging all their senses, is approached, as are your own depths.

Intending is being consciously intentional+plus. The plus is the orientation of yourself towards your precious Other, your Beloved. Intending is a conscious act but it is not simply one of thinking. It is a bit more like perpetual meditation on your beloved. When you Intend, every other person becomes an expression of your beloved. In the presence of every man, you sense your beloved. In the presence of every woman, you sense your beloved.

As you observe the movements of Others so do you sense the fullness which your beloved has endowed you with through her/his Intending with you at this same moment. Intending is a coupled act of sustained intimacy. It is a step beyond awareness—just thinking about your beloved. It is a practice of openness that sustains the intimate embrace when you are physically separated. Intending is how we are one in communion with an Other when not in immediate physical or communicative proximity.

Intending the Obliterated Womb

If one phrase could sum up the vision and quest of the Lone Male it is "obliterated womb." This describes the sexually violent quest and practice of the Lone Male. It is what he achieves when he convinces you that you have no mythic Mother, that you are a "motherless child." If you are created and not born, why is there a need for a mothering womb? There is none! Genesis 2-3, The Rib, proclaims that the male body is the birthing body. Do men have wombs? For Earthfolk, the most transforming intention, practice, and ritual is that of making present the obliterated womb and healing it. As you and your beloved, through coupled presence, make present and manifest the Womb so is our human family healed and made whole as One.

Since the Lone Male seeks to exert global dominion through the suppression and enslavement of the feminine, Intending the Obliterated Womb is an act of consciously willing to make sensually present Her, the goddess, our Mother. It is an act of memory, of recalling Her whose presence was visibly obliterated from Genesis—where there is no Mother goddess and only "motherless children."

This practice is like Practice C, above, but it seeks to actually effect a transference from the female to the male. Remember that Genesis as a ritual movement is the male being in the presence of the female and not seeing her. In the Garden everything human is soon forgotten and absent. This practice make the female visible as the male experiences himself as her womb.

Genesis' Garden ritual is also the willing-into-forgetfulness of Her—the Obliteration of the Womb. Earthfolk consciously remember and evoke the presence of the Obliterated Womb as part of our practice of making Her womb present once again. Intending the Obliterated Womb pivots upon creatively imagined acts of memory and remembering. Since we all are still in great part Lone Male males and females, this Intending calls the beloveds to be bold and courageous as you creatively imagine what you have never—until this practice—ever experienced!

Intending the Obliterated Womb evokes the horror and deep sadness of being a "motherless child." How then to creatively imagine being our "mother's child"?

Intending the Obliterated Womb is a coupling desire. It is an openness to the presence of the Other as a beloved "motherless child" wherein you allow your beloved to intimately embrace you and find motherly nourishment and nurturing from feeding upon your preciousness. You open so that your beloved may touch your most intimate self—enter your beloved womb to be re-born.

Intending the Obliterated Womb is a profoundly erotic moment of ecstasy. It is the realization of one's self as sensually immersed in an Other, here, the Mother. It is a pregnant moment where you live because your beloved offers him/herself as womb and nourishment for you.

This Intention is an act which effectively counters the isolating sense of the Lone Male which has you define yourself in bodily parts, that is, genitalia. Here, the male is not Lone but coupled. He is Father at the moment that you make yourself present as Mother. Amazingly, instead of presenting yourself through your fleshly parts, you free yourself to creatively imagine and so make present from within your coupled intimacy one another as Mother of All and Father of All.

Earthfolk males have learned that remembering the Obliterated Womb requires great courage. There is significant psychological risk in this simple ritual of remembering, for all the Lone Male images of bloodshed carom and careen, shriek, scream and howl through your mind. Many Earthfolk have become erotically terrified unto the gasp of dying. For the core image which will rise is the slicing off of your male penile wand. Yes, this is what remembering "The Rib" conjures up.

"Slicing off your male penile wand," who wants to imagine that? Consider that in Genesis Adam is laid down to sleep. He dreams. The Lone Male god dreams Adam and together they "give birth" to Eve. What even the Lone Male cannot deny is that birthing requires seminal blood—the transmittal of genetic material. So what lingers behind the Earthfolk interpretation here is the fact that birthing is a bloody act. But how does a man bleed? Not naturally by the moon cycle as women do. Rather he does so only when he is cut. Here now is a upside down insight, namely, that the Rib is a metaphor for the penis. After all, life must come from life; blood from blood. In other mythic traditions (Egyptian, Hindu, Navaho, among many), a male god claims to have masturbated life into existence. Likewise, consider that Adam masturbates Eve but it must be seed mingled with nurturing blood. To achieve this Adam's penis is sliced—circumcised blood drops. It bleeds, as it must in imitation of the Womb, and from the blood Eve issues forth. When an Earthfolk ritual of remembering brings into conscious awareness the Obliteration of the Womb what comes with it are horrifying and harrowing images, emotions and insights. The bleeding male penis is just one.

Earthfolk women understand the bizarre memory which is the Obliteration of the Womb. While they realize, as daughters of Eve, that they have been taught to see themselves as worthless and as having Obliterated Wombs, they grasp that the healing of the practice of remembrance can only occur through a transforming communion as beloveds. Women heal as they receive, forgive, and comfort their Adamic men and their bleeding wands. Beloveds intend memory as they touch each other's body. From a kiss on the forehead to a caress of a cheek, from the praise of eyes which sees into the other's soul down through a kiss on the lips and then the sculpting of the flesh downward and upward, front and back, arriving at the moment of intimate embrace, a comforting instant, so is remembering begun. While rituals vary as to how the senses are stimulated, that is, sound, smell, etc., the shared vision is to peer and sit in silence with the Obliterated Womb and in so doing to remember it into the Now.

A male may place his hand upon his Rib and confess his Adamic offense of Obliteration. He humbles himself before Her whom he has oppressed for millennia, and through Her daughter's caressing gesture the healing of memory begins. A woman may place a male's hand upon her womb or engage in other sensual acts, including healing his bleeding wand through coupling. At an appropriate moment, she praises him for his openness to death. She touches his penis as bleeding wand and invites him to know her as goddess, to remember himself as her beloved, not as her dominator. However it is that they Intend the moment, it enables them to heal the past and to turn towards the future as beloveds, at-home now with comforting memories.

The Earthfolk vision

In the Earthfolk vision we honor the Earth as an eternal living presence—the Living Earth. The Living Earth is Mother and once Her nurturing presence is felt so is the presence of Him, Sky Father. Mythically, we humans are born from a divine Mother and Father and are raised by them to become nurturing Living Earth parents. Our mythic "Yes!" is to our being both Mothered and Fathered, each and everyone, as a child in the One Family of Earthfolk.

Rejoice! We humans come from the mythic realm of intimacy! As we grow we are continually re-born from within an intimate embrace. We enrich our sense of being fully human as we explore and express our intimacy with another. We are no longer Lone Males who delude themselves into believing that the male body is the birthing body and that we each must go it alone, that is, embody "Do your own time!" No, each of us is twice-bodied: male and female. As we embrace in twice-bodied intimacy so do we give birth to ourselves and our human family.

For Earthfolk, human preciousness is discerned and deeply heartfelt when you are beheld by another as you behold them as beloved. Every person is someone's child born into family, and everyone is able to parent other children and so make manifest Earth's One Family. Here, we hear echoes of Martin Luther King dream:

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind....Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit.

All Earthfolk seek to live in ecstatic harmony with the beauty and truth of all living presences making no distinction between plant, animal and human beings. We behold every person as a precious beloved and strive to dwell peacefully and comfortably at home with all the Living Earth's manifestations—organic and inorganic. We understand spiritual, theological, and religious imagery and language to be a way of imagining how to honor and make present male and female healing and precious powers. We experience the fullness of being beloved in moments of respectful intimacy shared equally by a coupled female and male. We make one another real human persons as we acknowledge, honor, and embrace each other's subhumanity and humanity. Our daily walk is through the Shadow realm up into the Sunlight realm, then back down into Shadow and up into Sunlight, all the time creating as we walk a new dimension, that of the realm of the Earthfolk.

We Earthfolk respond to the challenges of Lone Male Earthpeople globalization by living "as if I am no one's enemy" and making manifest through embracing a beloved a transforming loving energy that can heal the world and all people. To live as an Earthfolk is to Resist! the Lone Male's illegitimate authority at the personal, social, cultural and mythic levels.

The Earthfolk vision and practice is a way of healing, becoming whole, and making precious oneself, others, and the Living Earth. We Earthfolk imagine the everlasting Living Earth as forever hearth and home. The Living Earth is us. It is hearth and we the flaming breath of fire. We humans are living manifestations of the Living Earth's passionate fire, the Living Earth's consciousness and conscience, and the Living Earth's imagining presences and so are we co-creators of the everyday world.

Imagine!

Summary of Pathway #3

Two events occurred in the mid-20th century that were first-ever experiences for humankind. These events were of mythic stature in that they redefined our basic understanding of human and nonhuman reality. These events scored iconic images onto the collective psyche of the human race. One event reflected the god-like powers wielded by humans as they created the first weapon of mass destruction. The second reflected like godly powers in that humans took residence in the heavens—on the moon—and from there proceeded to exercise total dominion over the Earth. These two events marked the opening of the age of Dominion globalization, that of Earth-America.

The new Nuclear Age dawned on August 6, 1945 when the Atomic Bomb fell upon two Japanese cities but in reality upon all humankind. On December 24, 1968 the Space Race triumphally ended as the Space Age mythically opened when an Apollo 8 astronaut clicked a photograph called "Earthrise." Both the Bomb's Mushroom Cloud and Earthrise are icons of a sad story of the Lone Male imagination. This sad story holds that humans are mythically motherless, that endless war is normative, that sexual violence is purgative, and that life on Earth is meaningless. This Lone Male imagination is historically rooted in the two biblical origin accounts in Genesis1-3. The Mushroom Cloud and Earthrise are foundational icons for those who see the planet as Earth-America, that is, the Earthpeople.

As the Nuclear and Space Ages opened, various social reform and social justice movements arose to collectively give form to a vision that enabled people to Resist! the rise and globalizing influence of Earth-America's Dominion. These movements included the Civil Rights, nonviolent peace and anti-war, feminist, Green, gay, Native Peoples, among others. As I promoted the play, "Peace Crimes," on regional campuses, I discovered how much I shared in common with my activist grandchildren who were usually committed to more than one activist cause. I realized that John Lennon gave all these movements—as he had initially to my generation's nonviolent and peace movements—an inspirational anthem, his song "Imagine."

Imaginatively, the Earthfolk movement continues to form by integrating various aspects of the numerous anti-Earth-America movements that have formed since the Sixties. Nonviolence, anti-racism, anti-sexism, animal liberation, Green sustainability, and economic justice are just a few of the non-predatory globalization values that young activists integrate into their daily schedules. In general, today's young activists represent two visions of globalization, that of the Earthpeople and the Earthfolk. Although all honor Mother Earth, the Earthfolk are distinguished by their "No!" to the mythic question "Are we humans motherless children?" This is reflected in their core claim that—as Earthrise inspired so many to understand—"Yes!" the Earth is One and on it reside the one and only family of humankind parented by Mother Earth and Father Sky.

The most difficult challenge I placed before today's youth remains the one I continue to face each and every day. To bridge between our generations and experiences I called these grandchildren to discover their own subhumanity—to embody themselves as Other. These were young folk who had intellectually dealt with America's Shadow history, that is, as part of their American History courses there were chapters detailing the evils of slavery, Native American exile onto Reservations, and the rise of the penitentiary as an institution of social control over an underclass mainly poor and non-white. They were knowledgeable about President Nixon's criminality, the sad story of Vietnam revealed by the Pentagon Papers, the cycle of political scandals: Watergate, Iran Contra, and the conversion of the national economy into a global military-industrial-academic engine. Yet, it was necessary that I challenge them to encounter their own personal subhumanity. So I called them to move beyond sympathy and empathy—beyond liberal social justice and compassionate conservatism—to actually discern, discover, and embody their Shadow subhuman selves. I invited them to become outlaw theologians, ever Resist!ing illegitimate authority both on the Inside and the Outside, both in the Shadow and the Sunlight.

I used Martin Luther King's "unearned sufferings" to discuss how they could ritually approach encountering their own subhumanity. However, my challenge was even more radical than simply urging them on an individualistic Hero's quest. As I heeded prison's counsel to "Do your own time!" and so became subhuman, I also heard proclaimed the unintended revelation that we humans can only do time together. We are all mythically one. There are no gooks, just people. You are me and I am you! So, I spoke of coupled presence. I boldly opened their eyes to prison's "terrible revelation," that is, that you could not—would not—become fully human unless and until you embraced two Others—your own Shadow Other and another personal Other—and was simultaneously embraced by them as precious and beloved.

The Earthfolk vision blossoms as two enter a nurturing embrace and heal the Obliterated Womb—embody and manifest coupled presence.

Earthfolk's vision holds that every person is precious and beloved. However, the Earthfolk challenge is to become twice-bodied, that is, become present to one's Shadow realm subhuman self as necessary step to being present as fully human. Becoming twice-bodied can be achieved through a ritual of coupled intimacy wherein two committed beloveds share their unearned sufferings and travel together through the Shadow realm. This ritual of intimacy pivots upon a nurturing embrace whose creative purpose is to make present one another as Mother Earth and Father Sky.

Earthfolk's most critical and revolutionary—dangerous and joyous—shout today is "Yes!" The "Yes!" that affirms and celebrates that "We humans have a Mother!" No, we are not mythically motherless children! This No is positively expressed as Yes when you make Mother's presence manifest as, through an intimate embrace, you and your beloved make Her present as the beloved of Him, and vice versa. It is within this nurturing embrace that you share your Shadow sad stories and Sunlight glad stories. What a nurturing embrace creates is a presence that is "a whole greater than the sum of its parts." So you discover that when She is present so is He—there is always a Mother and a Father, a male and a female, a man and a woman _: mythic parents_.

We Earthfolk manifest the presence of our mythic Mother and Father through our nurturing embraces as beloveds. On the global scale, when Mother and Father are present so do we experience that the Living Earth is us. We are lively manifestations, presences of the Living Earth. We are its consciousness and conscience, its imagining: the Living Earth's passion. The Living Earth is hearth and we the flaming breath of fire.

Each Earthfolk mythically parents every other human when we— _you_ _and_ _me_ —behold one anOther as precious and beloved.

"Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You, you may say

I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

I hope some day you'll join us

And the world will live as one"

Afterword

" _It's the worst of times...it's the best of times!_

We live in the Nuclear Age. We are armed to the teeth. On the global scale we have thousands of nuclear weapons stockpiled and at the other end it is the rage for individuals to "conceal and carry" guns. Dreadful fear is without a doubt the primary emotion of those who hold to the Lone Male Earthpeople way of living. In so many ways, everything continues to get worse. Every supposedly great invention is turned into a military weapon or project. Like the Manhattan Project, our academics and intellectuals are adjuncts of the military if not actually owned by military funded corporations.

What corporation does not pursue lucrative military contracts? What university passes on Department of Defense grants? Who in the media ever criticizes our endless wars—even when we invade a country, an act that violates Just War theory and international law, making our country and our leaders culpable as war criminals? Why aren't there public discussions about the (im)morality of our ever-increasing robot army? Where are religious leaders the ilk of Martin Luther King who speak out about America's "madness"?

What has the much touted indicator of the greatness of our human brain wroth—the computer? The pornographic internet. Drone bombers. Robotic soldiers. Star Wars Defense. Basically, today's soldier is merely an adjunct to weapons he/she cannot control. They are the firing pins, so to speak. There is so much death and maiming by "friendly fire" because the explosions and devastations caused often kill or maim our own soldiers or the individual who fires the weapon.

Is there any hope for the future? Not in the Lone Male Earthpeople vision. One way or another the Lone Male apocalyptic vision (resident in biblical stories and secular one, such as the story of the Manhattan Project) will come to fruition. Either through nuclear or chemical or biological or genetic warfare, the god of the Lone Male will consume Himself in an Earth-America destroying ritual of species suicide.

Bummer, dude!

As I engaged in several Earthfolk practices, such as "living as if I am no one's enemy" and creating preciousness through a nurturing embrace, I "discovered" what my Lone Male eyes were blinded to at mythic birth. When He and She, Mother and Father, male and female, me and you embrace what is realized is a peculiar, special and amazing energy—the energy of creation itself. On the Earthfolk website www.earthfolk.net I discuss this "vital zest" and related rituals and practices in more detail. From a theological perspective, it was vital zest that the biblical Rib account wanted to drive out of our mythic memory. The Rib basically said that vital zest did not exist, that only one God had the creative energy—"....no other gods before me." This is a cornerstone Lone Male lie.

So the best of times is right now! Through Earthrise and ecological discoveries, among other factors, our human awareness (subconsciously and consciously) has been awakened and we plainly see Her, Mother Earth, the Living Earth. We not only grasp the Lone Male Earthpeople vision but we have a countering Earthfolk vision. We have reclaimed the Shadow realm and we practice ways of moving Shadow experiences into Sunlight experiences that render us real human persons. But most of all, we have reclaimed our intimacy. The horror of Poof! is replaced, everyday, by the joy of experiencing our own and our beloved's preciousness. We realize that "as below, so above" means that what we do in the most personal realm, our intimacy, impacts every other human person...and the cosmos, to boot. What could be more wonderful?

You and I are the creators of the human family. We shall live forever as part of the Living Earth. We shall celebrate forever as family, for while the individual passes over and is transformed the human family perdures.

This is the best of times because you are here, present as precious and beloved, able to make manifest what it means to be fully human. Start Imagine-ing that!

Hurrah!
Appendix A

Rung #3 stories take you down to "where everything human is soon absent." This is a Shadow sector where darkness is the air and it breathes you, meaning, who you are as an individual is not even a conceivable notion. Rather, you actually become the collective we or us. You exist as a mythic presence. You are the Other and its many names: Bitch, Fag, Enemy, Gook... All experiences are your experiences. All pains shared pains. All violations committed not just on your behalf but by you. It is a one-bodied realm of Shadow darkness as unhealthy and inhuman as the one-bodied realm of Sunlight brightness.

_Remember_ : Inside, sodomy is both defeat and victory, punishment and redemption, pain and ecstasy. What else should you expect happens in an all male institution that is an expression of a culture with a Lone Male story of origin?

As previously mentioned, it is suggested that you read these only after you finish Pathway #3. You will then have valued the Earthfolk vision and risen to the Sunlight sector where you ascend to from the "where everything human is soon absent" Shadow sector.

When you have ritually worked through Rung #3 stories in Chapter 5, only then consider meditating on the following ones.

***

1.You take a cock in the mouth. At first you struggle. But then you accept it. It's just a rod. Yeah, using your mouth like a soft hand, jerking him off. What the fuck do I care? Maybe if I jack him off and offer him a mouthful of his miraculous cum, he'll back off? Sure, the safest way to go. So what is a cock in the mouth? Or up the asshole? Come on, what's your hang-up? Chug down some Jack Daniels or toke some good weed and I mean, man, it's all just come and cum and come again. Nothing messy. You can swallow or just spit it out, he really doesn't give a fucking goddam. So, Suck it down, bitch!

2.Yeah, it takes a bit of learning, this how to open your asshole. Not everyone is kind—brings some Vaseline. They just try to poke it in without working the sphincter. Jesus, that hurts, but it's not a shiv across your throat, plus your pimp's there to protect you. Let's praise pimps! Yeah, man, I mean that. How many bitches do you think would be sucking sod if their pimps were not so bold? My pimp has cut more than one asshole; and never asked me to deep throat him, which I mean I'd do at a moment's notice. I mean, I love my pimp. But let's get back to it: Your asshole needs some training. Some gardening, so to speak. A bit of seeding, here a finger highly Vaselined, one working you so that your sphincter expands. Then weeks on the rubber ball, duct taped to your back door so that every day you're exercising your portal of acceptance. Look, just get used to it, some guys are fucking assholes and other guys are just fucking the assholes. That just what doing time Inside is all about. Ooomph!

3.Look asshole, you think you're some kinda hero. I heard your blather about the Nam and how you fucked them with bullets and bombs and your own hard dick, but look motherfucker you're just some half-assed stupid motherfucker from some suburb of St. Paul whose taken a job as a Hack and thinks that it makes you some motherfucking god, one able to dish out fate, to call the shots on living and dying. But let me tell you, we all laugh at you. You're a pathetic dumbass white honkey who has no idea how the Big Boys have manipulated you. You thought that enlisting meant that you were some type of savior of mankind. Fuck, they brainwashed you so quickly that you were sucking their Big Cocks before you realized that you were just a Big Piece of Shit to them. So now you carry the wounds. Tell me about the shrapnel in your thigh but, Rambo, don't ask me to pity you, asshole! ...Look, man, you were just fucked up then and now you're just being fucked up again. A Hack instead of Sergeant So-and-So. Jesus of the motherfucking Christ, when will you wake up?

4.Should I tell you what it's like to get six inches of cock up your asshole, _unrequested?_ I mean, do you know what's it's like to watch three motherfuckers unleash their ding-dongs and know they mean for you to pleasure them, suck them off, let them dig deep into your ass alley and hear them groan and shriek, "You're one motherfucking great piece of ass!" I mean, in the morning I can strut my stuff. These ass pounder will tell others and they will line up. Man, I mean I will get anything I want. If I want _Cutty Sark_ , fucking-A it is there. If I want my own little boy, shit, he's there licking my balls. I mean, when you are one good piece of ass, everything is yours. Look, man, I was prepared in the seminary. I learned well that my body was the birthing body. Males rule the world! So fucking-A, why wouldn't they love me? Lust for me? Beat each other over the head to get first in line? Jesus of the Christ, I am magnificent. Once you've tasted my innocence, my purity, my acceptance of all your most violent of violences, fuck, then you know. In my ass is redemption. I take all that is male upon me. I worship all that Jesus came to save. I am the kosmic fuck. So, stand in line...and be redeemed!

5.He'd been a week on the fuck line. I mean, I tried to save the Jesus Freak but he refused to call upon us COs as his savior. He expected Jesus to arrive, somehow, on a beam of light or something weird like that and intervene, cut off the dicks of his attackers. But it doesn't go down like that, and I don't mind taking my place, maybe number 111, that's okay with me. He's soft and very yielding when I come in him. A sweet murmur like the first woman I ever fucked. Christ, he'll be on the line for years to come. I'll be back, you can bet on that!

6.The Hacks had a pool. Nothing is secret Inside. They wanted to fuck my ass. They were outraged that I went out and taught school with their wives. They knew, as I did, that I was ravaging their wives while they were working. I pussy-licked all their wives and girlfriends. There wasn't a rack of tits that I didn't stroke and pet on my way to my classroom. At lunchtime, I lifted all their skirts and inserted my savage outlaw cock into their unsatisfied pussies. It didn't take a Zen master to know that these women were never properly fucked. They were all unfulfilled goddesses, yearning for a wild ass Pan of a man to pipe them into ecstasy. Ha. I molested them all. I left none untouched. Not the ugly or fat or Scandinavian rejects. Full-bodied northern bitches who in another time were cherished goddesses. No chance for them in this skinny age. So I looked at them and sucked them inside me. Took them back to my dorm cot and masturbated them into goddess-hood. Ain't I just some fucking-A kosmic stud. Better believe it!

7.Even I knew that he was dead meat. This Jesus Freak, again. I tried, believe me I did. I told him to claim that he was a CO and join our gang, but he didn't. Why? Maybe I should've quoted scripture to him? Maybe. Well, he wasn't much fun by the time I got back to him. Only sixty days in and he wasn't much in the way of pleasuring. I mean, I had to do it all. He gave me nothing. I had to lift his ass and spread his cheeks, he didn't cooperate in anyway. Is that fair? Shit, I knew that his pimp was just about all out of patience. He only asked for one pack of cigs. A bad sign. But I had tried my nonviolent best. I had pleaded with the pimp to let him come over and die in Dorm D—the land of the COs. But he asked for just too much. Fifty cartons, can you believe that? This bitch was so far down that he'd never come back, so how fair was that offer?

Vietnam

8. _Vietnam baby_ : "... I walked into this village and what do you think I see? I see this old man, I mean wrinkled skin, toothless, with tattoos up and down everywhere and he's skipping, like a kid skipping, around this little baby, for me it appears dead, almost yellow, and he's waving a feather, looked like a chicken feather or something and he's making the weirdest of noises, I mean it's like chicken farts or pigs fucking, ha ha, something really weird and the folks around, they're standing around looking like they're hypnotized and then it dawns on me, hits me like a ton of bricks, they're stoned! drugged out and I bet they killed the baby! and this old geezer is trying to spook us with his mumbo jumbo and I just knew, just knew this baby was part American, that some girl seduced one of our guys, I've heard about this, how they blow a guy and then run back with the sperm in their mouths and, Christ, just thinking about this makes me crazy! They're just Satan's Children, Father, Satan's Children, I'm sure you've hear this, you having to hear all these terrible things, God Bless You Father," long gulped pause, coming back on a slow train, "takes the sperm and Jesus help me! takes it and lies with another woman and blows it up her cunt," rocketing frenzy, "and then they take the baby and kill it! like it's an animal or something, Christ! and this was what they were doing, I'm sure of it, Father, they were doing their Satan thing, they were trying to kill the Spirit of America, the Soul of Christianity, that's what McGurdy says, "The Soul of Christianity"... he's been to college and he knows that stuff, Father, and that's why I wasted them and that's why we destroyed the village, all the animals, everything, McGurdy told us, "Just like General Joshua in the Old Testament!" ... yeah, Father, we are God's Avengers, McGurdy told us, whooped and hollered and we all knew what we had to do, "God's Avengers!" and I know, I know God understands, I don't understand but God understands, isn't that right, Padre?"

9. _Vietnam cock_ : "The fact is, Father, I have these moments, Father, it's hard to say this in words but understand that I'm a Faithful Son of the Church, I try my best, but out there, in country, the bush, you've heard them tell it, hell, it's different, I know you've been there, that's why I'm here, and you've got to help me, feel free at anytime to interrupt me, rank's not in order in here is it?" Nervous snort. "I understand the killing. I see what we're doing, actually see it, like if I'm at Mass and you were there, I'm up on a hill somewhere and the boys are down there and we're in a hot zone and the air is full of insect chatter and the land moves, the trees move, they are bush, a woman's bush and as they separate her big cunt appears, like it's the trees, they're, sorta, like Moses at the Red Sea." Jerky pause; jacked up enthusiasm: "Oh, yeah, it's a vision, I'm sure, for our understanding, and the boys move through the jungle like tentacles, they're colors, streams of colors and they approach her cunt, I can taste her, smell her, and the firefight lighting up the sky, Father, it's like words, "No! No! No!!" (chuckling bemusement) "But it's like any woman, saying No! when she means Do me! ... and they all become, they all merge, the colors and the boys, into a cock, that slithers like a snake, a big thick cock, yeah, big and thick! ..." (excitement splats!) "and then it all comes together, the boys and the rockets and her screams throughout the air and the cock just humping and humping and giving her a good ole fuck! and, and then it all explodes, like a gigantic orgasm, holy God Father, it's true, it's true, it's like God's fucking the Earth and we're His cock and it's all just, sorta, just like, I can't think about it any other way, she's screams like any bitch and Christ, Father, I'm, I'm just...just, it's just so good, Father, so good, so good and I know that's what it's all about, all about..." (hopeful, perplexed, fascinated) "Is this something I should know about, Father? Or is it a test of my Faith?"

***

_Just tell me_ , how much of this do you believe? Ya know, I'd fuck your ass this way and that until Jesus himself comes back to puke. Ha. You're such a dumb fuck dreamer that I don't know what to do. Maybe just put you in a room and have you listen to John Lennon for eternity. Shit, how fucking-A cruel is that? Peace, man, peace!
Appendix B

Here are themes in the other stories.

1. _Russell_. He disembodies himself and lives a false life. He's always on the run, escaping from this and that—mostly himself.

2. _Crocker_. He's evil but in the way that Scott Peck talks about in his book, _People of the Lie_. He's experienced sexual abuse...Did you abuse him? He seeks revenge. When have you sought revenge?

3. _Sr. Celesete_ and _Hacks_. Bureaucracy enables you to maintain a safe personal distance from evil. You just do your job and don't worry about what the higher ups do. You know that rumors abound about producing products in third-world sweatshops. But you don't stop to think about child slavery? How far away from evil do you have to be to feel good?

4. _Slap da bitch!_ Sexual violence. When have you waged it by inviting it? Not the phallic male but you as a cold hearted pussy? Lesbians aren't sexually violent? Do you really want me to buy into that? Fuck!

5. _Mafia Sal_. When have you justified an act by writing it off to your "animal instincts"? When have you "acted like an animal" and hurt someone, only to pray to Jesus and have Him wipe away your sins before you go upstairs to masturbate?

6. _Jared_. Great avatar of enlightenment and deliverer of justice, when has your compassion killed and your nonviolence been the blade of your violence? Have you saluted your "inner Hack"?

7. _Cigarettes_. "What is your price?"

8. _Kill_. Who acts on your part, to kill those you hate? Why do you hate the cops yet do nothing to stop their racist brutalities? Have you heard yourself praising the soldiers whose fingers click the buttons on the drones? Have you washed the blood from off your hand, dear Pilate?

9. _Vietnam rape_. Was the in-country Marine who testified at my trial speaking to you? "It wasn't a good, it was a person?" How much of a Lone Male are you, lady?

10. _Hacks._ Are we all Hacks fronting for Organized Crime? Fools? Can you sense why prison effectively keeps you on the Outside? Away from Inside experiences? Where else has this happened? What is it that you don't see, and make no great effort to see? Is it poverty in a blighted neighborhood? How drugs are a business and not a "war"? How many times have you averted your eyes, turned your head away, closed your eyes?

11. _Visitor's room_. Where else have you heard the sounds of silence? In places where folks are effectively disembodied. I mean, right in your own office building. Where do you not go so that you do not have to deal with "losers" or the drop-out culture? Then look inside your own world. When with your family do you make them feel like visitors? Keeping them at bay. How many Visitors Rooms do you have in your life?

12. _Hate mantra_. Read this out loud. Several times. Fly wherever the heartfelt energy takes you. Inside or Outside.

Resources: Pathway#1

1)Information and documentation about the trials of the "Minnesota 8" are at http://www.minnesota8.net This site includes trial transcripts, my and thirteen witnesses' testimony, prosecutor and defense appellate briefs, photographs, newspaper clippings, media interviews, etc. There are links to the play a) "Peace Crimes: the Minnesota 8 vs. the war," b) a documentary, "Peace Crimes: Backstage," about the making of the play which has interviews with the 8, c) my published and unpublished writings, and d) a link to the "Peace and War in the Heartland" project http://www.pwh-mn.org

2)On the site there is also a "Thank you!" from "Joe" who with his wife sat down near forty years later to thank us for destroying his draft file. They realized that they would not have had the life they did if he had gone off to Vietnam. Over the years, and especially during the play, men would come up with like stories and appreciation. Tom Trow, the producer of the documentary "Peace Crimes: Backstage" had his file destroyed during the "Beaver 55" raid in February 1970. Tom said, "I was obligated to Register but not to re-Register." Remember, those were pre-computer days and there were no back-ups to the paper files, so if a guy's file was destroyed he "disappeared" from the system unless he chose to re-Register.

3)We had three trials. Ostensibly to avoid the media circus and negative government experiences surrounding large anti-war trials like those of the Chicago 8, Milwaukee 14, Catonsville 9, etc., our trials were not consolidated, as was standard case management procedure. We had two judges who were assigned based upon the geographic location of our raids. Judge Edward Devitt handled two trials and disallowed any defense; only personal testimony was permitted. Judge Phillip Neville allowed a "Defense of Necessity," my pro se representation, and thirteen witnesses. My trial was: United States District Court, District of Minnesota, Fifth Division. United States of America, Plaintiff v. Francis X. Kroncke and Michael D. Therriault, Defendants, 5–70 Criminal 19.

4)My appeal was: United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit 459 F.2d 697 (1972). Part of my appellate brief, argued by me as attorney pro se, was published as: Francis X. Kroncke, "Resistance as Sacrament," Cross Currents XXI, no. 4 (Fall 1971): 369– 376.

5)Defendant Exhibit 6 was: Walter M. Abbott, S.J., ed., _The Documents of Vatican II_ (New York: America Press, 1966). http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/

6)Daniel Ellsberg planned to release the "Pentagon Papers" at my and Mike's trial. Since the FBI had been following Dan, as they knew he had the Papers, the judge was directed to sharply curtail the scope of his testimony, so his plan failed. He released the Papers six months later. Dan is a fearless intellect and heart on a heroic journey. http://www.ellsberg.net/

7)Mel Duncan was a young student whose professor told him to go watch a trial. An amazing unintended consequence of our criminal act was influencing his commitment to nonviolence and so his co-founding with David Hartsough of the _Nonviolent Peaceforce_. http://www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org/

8)"Hang the Minnesota 8!" letter to the editor and a poet's response reveal the range of deep feelings the times evoked.

" **Public Hanging Favored**

To the Editor: Many people have seen fit publicly to go to the aid of the eight charged with raids on draft offices. The eight persons don't mean any harm; they only want recognition. I would like to see them get the recognition they deserve during the Aquatennial—a public hanging of all eight." David B. Dahlberg, St. Louis Park (Minneapolis Tribune, July 17, 1970.)

The Minnesota 8 and the Letter-Writers

by John Berryman

Here's one who wants them hanged. A poor sick mind,

signing itself & saying where it's from:

St. Louis Park: Out of the woodwork vermin come.

To crises rise our worst, and (some) our best

to dare illegal deeds in an unpopular cause

defying prison because they feel they ought, because

the sanity & honour seem endangered,

or seem convulsed, of their own country, and

a flaccid people can't be got to understand

its state without some violence undertaken,

by somebody without a thing to gain,

to shock it into resisting—one program pain

of treatment back to health of the body politic:

to stop napalming pint-sized yellow men

& their slant-eyed children, and ground arms & come home again

O the Signers broke the law, and deserved hanging,

by the weird light of the sage of St. Louis Park,

who probably admires them. These bear their rare mark.

_Editor's note_ : John Berryman is the University of Minnesota Regents' professor of humanities, author of "The Dream Saga," winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Bollingen Award and National Book Award." Minneapolis Tribune on Tuesday July 21, 1970."

9)Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's life and work at the "American Teilhard Association" website. http://www.teilharddechardin.org/

10)Almost every "Catholic Radical" was influenced by the Catholic Worker Movement led by Dorothy Day and her legion of nonviolent, mostly anarchistic but fairly theologically traditional Roman Catholics. http://www.catholicworker.org/historytext.cfm?Number=78 Also the works of the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. http://www.merton.org/

11)A final word about my Dad. His story has so many baffling layers, and it is indicative of his era and his notion of both masculinity and patriotism that he did not discuss his negative war experiences with me. Believe it or not, I have to say, "My Dad killed 5 Americans." After leaving the Manhattan Project he was buried as a supply officer in the South Pacific. A sea storm arose as an aircraft carrier was being provisioned. He was the officer in charge of determining that one ship was totally empty so that it could be cut loose and sunk. He made that decision only to discover that five Americans had remained on board the sinking ship. Battlefield veterans call such events death by "friendly fire." My Mom said that after the war Dad paid his own way to visit all five families. At times I'm moved to wonder about the Shadow family story I've inherited. My Dad and I went deep into the Shadow realm, and I hope that my efforts to unleash the Sunlight from his dedication to God and Country shine through my own life.

12)Until the emergence of activist scholars in the 1960s, rarely did an American social scientist critically apply his or her research findings concerning the social, anthropological, or cultural characteristics of other societies and cultures to the American condition. American scholars, in the main, still continue to practice their own version of "American Exceptionalism" which is a secular variant of the Lone Male's exclusive notion of being a Chosen People.

13)The following Resources: Pathway #2 lists many of my intellectual influences. Here I reference the Roman Catholic sacramental tradition as one source for my analysis of the ritual and liturgical aspects of America's institutional lifestyle.

My Masters in Visions focused on the Patristic Era (first three hundred years of Christianity) and the study of sacramental visions. A major characteristic of that ancient era was the rise and organization of the ritual and liturgical practices of the institutional Church. Christianity radically shifted during this period from being a small Jewish reform movement that awaited the imminent Second Coming of Jesus as the Son of Man/ Christ to becoming the mainstay orthodox religion of an imperialistic empire, here Constantine's empire, soon to become the "Holy" Roman Empire.

Empires impose order and orthodoxy. The most significant adjustment that the Christian community had to make, as it reacted to the disappointment that the Second Coming was delayed and that somehow they had to keep their eschatological faith, was to positively respond to Constantine's adoption (or cooptation) of their sect as his Imperial Faith. Two ritual and liturgical shifts occured at this historic moment.

Christians abandoned their characteristic pacifism, despite the inspirational faith witnesses of the Martyrs and those who were slain because they refused to go before a Roman magistrate and burn incense to the "genius" of Caesar. Death from not burning incense! Sounds idiotic, yes? But the Christians knew that this was not just a political act, rather it was a religious act in that it validated Caesar's claim to possess the divine right to take human lives, that is, to go to war. War has always been a social ritual, and entering the military a liturgical act. I hope that you're not surprised right now as you grasp why the Lone Male continues to punish those of us who refuse to burn incense to Caesar, here, America?

Some typical Patristic era quotes of leading theologians include: in _On the Chaplet_ , Tertullian wrote, "The divine banner and the human banner do not go together, nor the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil. Only without the sword can the Christian wage war: for the Lord has abolished the sword." About 240, Origen, in _Contra Celsus_ , wrote, "You cannot demand military service of Christians any more than you can of priests. We do not go forth as soldiers." Around 160, in _Dialogue with Trypho_ , Justin Martyr stated, "We ourselves were well conversant with war, murder, and everything evil, but all of us throughout the whole wide earth have traded in our weapons of war. We have exchanged our swords for ploughshares, our spears for farm tools. Now we cultivate the fear of God, justice, kindness to men, faith, and the expectation of the future given to us by the Father himself through the Crucified One."

The theological focus shifts from being nonviolent critics of Caesar to developing institutional sacramental rituals that enable the clergy to order the lives of individuals. This marked the rise of "Church visions" which became the sole purview of a professional class—priestly theologians. Please realize that I hold sacramental practice in great esteem. The Church looked at every aspect of personal growth and designed a way for an individual to make present the divine through following a daily and life-long cycle of religious practices. This cycle included the sacraments of: Baptism, blessing birth. Confirmation, celebrating the maturation of a young adult. Marriage, honoring the work of raising a family. Extreme Unction, blessing the passage of dying and enabling familial and social grieving. Daily, an individual could be forgiven of his/her sins and set back on a righteous path through Confession. Likewise, he/she could mystically merge as One with the Christ through eating His body ("real flesh and blood") through the Eucharistic celebration. Then there was one for those specially called to serve all as priests, Holy Orders—whose objective was to organizing this sacramental ordering of life.

Despite my valuing of the tradition, sacramental visions has not tapped into its socio-political heritage for almost two millennia. So I've little hope that today's sacramental theologians will find inspiration in my trial based advocacy of the performance of socio-political sacramental acts. Nevertheless as I explore the Earthfolk vision, I not only source my approach in the earliest Christian tradition of pacifistic _Resistance!_ to illegitimate authority but acknowledge the benefits drawn from the research of a slew of mythologists, sociologists, cultural historians, and other social scientists. Personally, I was first inspired by Mircea Eliade's notion of sacred space and time. I went from there to Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, William Irving Thompson, and then into the history of consciousness school of thought (Jean Gebser, the Spiral Dynamics movement, Ken Wilbur, among others). Yet, as a young man, after reading John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks I realized that not only had the Sioux's hoop been broken but so had ours. The biblical fall and Augustine's Original Sin kept the West (religious and secular) stuck as Captors of their Captive selves. There was need for a prison break!

In many ways I seek to do what Black Elk sought to do but judged himself as failing to achieve.

"And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."

Truly, the Lone Male Earthpeople's predatory and/or stewardship globalization destroyed the hoop, center, and sacred tree of America's indigenous Peoples, as it is now seeking to destroy the hoop, center, and sacred tree of Earth's one family of humans. What else is the aim of Nuclear War but self-destruction? But we—you and me, elders and youths—are not pitiful because we have a vision of our Shadow realm and we are on the Mobius road to an ecstatic Sunlight story, that of the Earthfolk.

Resources: Pathway#2

"Except for the purpose of procreation, another man would have been a more suitable companion for Adam." St. Augustine, _The Literal Meaning of Genesis_ , Book IX, 5.9 in _The Fathers of the Church_ , vol. 84, trans. R. J. Teske, S.J., (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1991).

I am aware that Outlaw Visions emerges from my personal, somewhat peculiar, experiences. Although introducing Outlaw Visions necessitates my detailing some of my most intimate experiences, as I found through King's "unearned sufferings," there is an almost programmatic way that you can enter your own Shadow realm and experience your own subhumanity. It requires both personal practices, such as 1) "living as if I am no one's enemy," and 2) a ritual embrace with a Beloved. These are practices open to everyone. Nevertheless, several questions are fair game:

1)A subhuman? Since I am a white, middle-class, male intellectual and activist some categorically reject my claim to having been qualitatively transformed into a slavish subhuman. Their objections cluster around the fact that slavery does not legally exist in America anymore, and/or a claim that imprisonment is not enslavement. Some argue that a woman is always a slave in a patriarchy and that Sarah's Hagar is categorically a different type of slave than I or any male could ever be. I am sensitive to the peculiarity of the experiential basis for the analysis and interpretive claims I make here. Nonetheless, moved by a sense of obligation, I write on behalf of the imprisoned Hagars, both male and female. My position is influenced by the "visions from the periphery" of liberation theologians. Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, _Introducing Liberation Visions_ (New York: Orbis Books, 1987).

2)Sources. Clearly, I am indebted to a small nation of scholars and other writers. My biggest burden is to acknowledge them and then with twice-bodied insight judge them as "irrelevant and immaterial." Sound harsh? Actually, my own trial judgment stands as their mythic judgment. I embodied them or at least mentally represented them at trial. My words to the judge and jury were their words. I spoke Catholic: Vatican Council II and Teilhard de Chardin jargon. I spoke American Resistance and revolution to illegitimate authority: nonviolent civil disobedience. All stood with me and were also summarily dismissed as "irrelevant and immaterial."

Sound like an odd judgment? Consider that all these traditional voices boomed a loud "Yes!" to the mythic question "Are we humans motherless children?" As good, noble, devoted, etc., as these thinkers and activists were they remained controlled by the Lone Male patriarchal vision and deeply anchored emotions of sexual violence of the Captor's glad story. For me, they remain as Captors as long as they choose to continue to live as biblical atheists who deny the presence of our Mother.

I also look at all my sources as "leaks." While they use the dominant vocabulary and imagery of the Captor glad story, their thought "leaks," that is, hints at or even makes you unintentionally stumble and fall into anti-Lone Male experiences. These are thinkers and activists who labor, sometimes with long-suffering patience, to find a speck of nonviolence or compassion or feminine traits in the patriarchal story of the Lone Male. One somewhat bizarre example is that of Julian of Norwich, a medieval mystic. She could do little else than simply say that Jesus and the Christ are both our mothers. "A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our precious mother, Jesus, can feed us with himself." Can you sense the somewhat psychotic tension in that statement? As with every woman raised as Eve, the Shadow Mothers (like Sarah) prevent women like Julian from experiencing their bodies as fully female or as ritual instruments of intimacy. http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/julian.htm

Even the amazing PierreTeilhard de Chardin came up short when he failed to sense the Atomic Bomb with twice-bodied sensing and rather provided an extreme version of a one-bodied response. "Some Reflections on the Spiritual Repercussions of the Atom Bomb" in _The Future of Mankind._ (1946) His words took me to the edge of Lone Male spirituality but he remained a Captor theologian. <http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title> =2287&C=2169

Then there are sources that simply open the flood gates. Truly, a picture is worth a thousand words and this fresco says it all about "the male body is the birthing body." Bartolo di Fredi's fresco Creation of Eve, 1356, represents this literal belief. http://www. artchive.com/web_gallery/M/Manfredi-de-Battilor-Bartolo-Di-Fredi-Fredi/ _The-Creation-of-Eve-_ 1356-67.html.

3)I conclude that those who composed (and those continuing to compose) Lone Male Captor visions are suffering from a form of biblically based Lone Male PTSD. Here is a widely accepted definition.

" **Post-traumatic Stress Disorder** , or PTSD, is a psychiatric disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of life-threatening events such as military combat, natural disasters, terrorist incidents, serious accidents, or violent personal assaults like rape. Most survivors of trauma return to normal given a little time. However, some people will have stress reactions that do not go away on their own, or may even get worse over time...People who suffer from PTSD often relive the experience through nightmares and flashbacks, have difficulty sleeping, and feel detached or estranged, and these symptoms can be severe enough and last long enough to significantly impair the person's daily life.

PTSD is marked by clear biological changes as well as psychological symptoms. PTSD is complicated by the fact that it frequently occurs in conjunction with related disorders such as depression, substance abuse, problems of memory and cognition, and other problems of physical and mental health. The disorder is also associated with impairment of the person's ability to function in social or family life, including occupational instability, marital problems and divorces, family discord, and difficulties in parenting."

_National Center for PTSD_ http://www.ncptsd.va.gov

If the intended end result of Genesis is the atheistic theological move to obliterate any memory of Her, the Mother Goddess, which translates into saying "Yes! We have no Mother!" then isn't it quite clear that something ghastly and traumatic has occurred? Answer honestly: "Were you born from a mother?" If you can say No, then just burn this book. Ha. Is it such a big step then to accept that the Lone Male is a Captor theologian whose vision and practices can only result in creating a world of subhumans? With everything that is feminine and of the goddess removed from the world, how can we look at the Other except as an intimate enemy?

4)Bibliography for the Cross Currents article, "An Outlaw's Visions"

Abbott, Walter. M., S.J., editor. The Documents of Vatican II. New York: America Press, 1966.

Abraham, Joseph. "Feminist Hermeneutics and Pentecostal Spirituality: the Creation Narrative of Genesis as Paradigm." Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies, (2003, 6:1): 3-21.

Augustine of Hippo. Several works on Genesis are foundation for Lone Male Captor Visions. St. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 84), trans. R. J. Teske, S.J., D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1991.

________, Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis (The Works of St. Augustine. Vol. 13), trans. E. Hill, O.P., New York: New City Press, 2002.

________, Sermo ad Caesariensis Ecclesia plebem, Sermon 96, 7, 9 in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 4, Hendrickson Publishers, annotated edition, June 1, 1994.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo; http://books.google.com/books?id=q2lIJY6iJNkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Boer, Roland. "The Fantasy of Genesis 1-3." Biblical Interpretation. (2006: 14,4): 309-331. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=21466808&site=ehost-live (accessed June 13, 2008)

Boff, Leonardo and Clodovis. Introducing Liberation Visions. New York: Orbis Books, 1987. http://liberationvisions.org/

Campbell, Joseph. "The New Story: Life From a Planetary Perspective." In Context (Winter, 1985/86), 52.

Cone, John. H. God of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 1975.

Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1973 and 1985.

_______, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1978 and 1990. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/daly.html

Dever, William G. "Folk Religion in Early Israel: Did Yahweh have a Consort?" In Aspects of Monotheism, 1996. Edited by Hershel Shanks and Jack Meinhardt (Biblical Archaeological Society) N.P.

http://www.basarchive.org/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBKAM&Volume=0&Issue=0&ArticleID=3&UserID=2238 (accessed 6/9/2008)

di Fredi, Bartolo. "Creation of Eve," 1356-67 https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Manfredi-De-Battilor-Bartolo-Di-Fredi-Fredi/The-Creation-Of-Eve-1356-67.html

Edwards, Jonathan. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741). In Jonathan Edwards, Basic Writing. New York: The New American Library, 1966.

_____________, Sermons and Discourses, 1739-1742, ed. Harry S. Stout, Vol. 22 in Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, vols. 1-26 ,Yale Univ. Press, 1957-2008.

Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard. God's Phallus, and other problems for men and monotheism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schussler. In Memory of Her: A feminist theological reconstruction of Christian origins. New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1985. http://www.hds.harvard.edu/faculty/schusslerfiorenza.cfm

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 1970 and 2000.

Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. "Goddesses: Biblical Echoes." In Feminist Approaches to the Bible, 1995. Edited by Hershel Shanks. Online: N.P. http://www.basarchive.org/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBKFA&Volume=0&Issue=0&ArticleID=3&UserID=2238

Gimbutas, Marija. The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe. University of California Press, 1974. http://www.marijagimbutas.com/

Heidel, Alexander. The Babylonian Genesis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

Kerr, Hugh T., editor. John Calvin, A Compend of the Institutes of Religion." Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1964.

King, Martin Luther. "I have a dream" address. http://www.mlkonline.net/dream.html

Kramer Heinrich, and James Sprenger. Malleus Maleficarum, trans. Montague Summers. London: Arrow Books, 1971. http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/ (Dover Publications, 1971). First published around 1486. The manual of the judicial Inquisition removes any doubts about the Lone Male attitude towards women.

Kroncke, Francis X. "The Healing of Vietnam," Voices: the art and science of psychotherapy (Journal of the American Academy of Psychotherapists) Spring/Summer 1991, Vol.27, no. 1& 2, p. 149-155.

_______"Outlaw or American Patriot?" No pages. Cited June, 2008. http://www.minnesota8.net/kroncke-writings.html

_______Patriotism Means Resistance, 1972 trial memoir MS. No pages. Cited June, 2008. Online: http://mnhs.mnpals.net (search "Author" enter "Kroncke F"), Minnesota Historical Society and http://www.minnesota8.net/kroncke-writings.html

_______"Prison, Bottoming Out, Mother." Cross Currents, XXVIII:1 (Spring 1988): 53-63.

_______"Resistance as Sacrament." Cross Currents, XXI:4 (Fall 1971):369-376.

________ "The Religious Influence on the Rise of the Penitentiary, 1787-1822." No pages. Cited June, 2008. Online: http://www.minnesota8.net/kroncke-writings.html

________ "Teilhard de Chardin's Personalizing Universe," Honors thesis, St. John's University (Minnesota) library, 1966.

Mollin, Marian. "Communities of Resistance: Women and the Catholic Left of the Late 1960s." The Oral History Review, Vol. 31, 2004.

Neihardt, John. G., editor. Black Elk Speaks: being the life story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. University of Nebraska Press, 1979.

Neumann, Erich. The Great Mother: an analysis of the archetype. Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series, 1972. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Neumann

Osiek, Carolyn. "The Feminist and the Bible: Hermeneutical Alternatives." Pp. 94-105 in Feminist Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship. Edited by A.Y. Collins. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985.

Reuther, Rosemary Radford. Goddesses and the Divine Feminine. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Radford_Ruether

Shanks, Hershel, et al., editors. "Defining the Problems: Where we are in debate," The Rise of Ancient Israel Resident Associate Program, Smithsonian Institute), 1991. Online. Biblical Archaeology Society. http://www.basarchive.org/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBKRA&Volume=0&Issue=0&ArticleID=1&UserID=2238 (accessed 6/9/2008) N.P

Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper, 1979. http://www.starhawk.org/

Taylor, Kenneth N. The Living Bible, Paraphrased. Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971.

Trible, Phyllis. Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984. "It [feminism] recounts tales of terror in memoriam to offer sympathetic readings of abused women."

_______God and the rhetoric of sexuality, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978). http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/img/assets/6396/TribleP_FA51305PDF.pdf

_Also_ :

a)Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's life and work at the "American Teilhard Association" http://www.teilharddechardin.org/ I am indebted to Teilhard's acquaintance and my teacher, Max Wildiers, O.F.M., Cap.

b)Matthew Fox http://originalblessing.ning.com/ and http://www.matthewfox.org/

c)Elaine Pagels, "What became of God the Mother?" http://www.womenpriests.org/body/pagels.asp

__________, Adam, Eve and the Serpent (Vintage Books, 1988).

http://www.princeton.edu/religion/people/display_person.xml?netid=epagels

d)William Irwin Thompson http://www.williamirwinthompson.org/

5)"Martin Luther King Online" http://www.mlkonline.net/speeches.html is a public domain resource for King's speeches, writings, and links.

Resources: Pathway#3

Shadows of Hiroshima

"...in Hiroshima {people} were vaporized and literally turned into shadows."

"With a blinding flash and a sky-high fireball, the world's first atomic bomb exploded over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The American bomb killed about 70,000 Japanese instantly, and an equal number would soon die of radiation poisoning. The weapon saved American soldiers' lives and ended the Second World War, but it ushered in a new era of nuclear arms. CBC Archives looks at the atomic bomb, its impact on Hiroshima and its legacy." Hiroshima Shadow People http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/war-conflict/second-world-war/shadows-of-hiroshima/hiroshima-remembered.html

Planetary culture

•William Irwin Thompson http://www.rain.org/~da5e/Thompson.html, http://photosynthesis.com/William_Irwin_Thompson.html

•Jean Gebser http://www.gaiamind.org/Gebser.html

•Institute of Noetic Sciences http://www.noetic.org/

•The Gaia movement http://www.gaiamind.com/evolve.html, http://www.Envirolink.org/mkzdk/texts/gaia.html

•Lindisfarne Association http://www.lindisfarne-association.org/

•Sri Aurobindo http://www.sriaurobindosociety.org.in/index.htm

•Teilhard de Chardin http://www.teilharddechardin.org/; http://www.gaiamind.com/Teilhard.html

•Barbara Marx Hubbard—Evolve http://www.evolve.org

•Ken Wilber http://wilber.shambhala.com/index.cfm/xid,1546927/yid,16750067/

•James Lovelock http://www.jameslovelock.org/

•Joanna Macy, http://www.joannamacy.net/

Rituals

•Starhawk http://www.starhawk.org

•Reclaiming http://www.reclaiming.org

•Reweaving http://www.reweaving.org

•Margo Anand http://www.margotanand.com/

•Black Elk Speaks http://www.firstpeople.us/articles/Black-Elk-Speaks/Black-Elk-Speaks-Index.html

•DanceHammers http://www.dancehammers.com/

•WATER—Women's Alliance for Visions, Ethics, and Ritual http://waterwomensalliance.org/

Shadow Work and Integral Living

•The Mankind Project and its "New Warrior Training" http://mankindproject.org/

•Shadow Work http://www.shadowwork.com/

•Integral Life http://integrallife.com/home

•Robert Bly http://www.robertbly.com/

•Boys to Men http://www.boystomen.org/

•Empowered Girl Alliance http://www.empoweredgirl.org/

•Women Within http://www.womanwithin.org/index.htm

•Women in Power http://www.womeninpowerprogram.com/

Hibakusha Stories

http://www.hiroshima-remembered.com/history/hiroshima/page14.html

Francis X. Kroncke is a seeker whose has journeyed through the monastic life, the theological academy, federal courtrooms, a federal prison cell, and the byways of corporate America. In 1970, he took his Catholic theology into the American courts as he defended his draft board raiding crime, re: the trials of the "Minnesota 8." During and after serving time, he explored the dark, Shadow side of America...and his own soul. In his published essays he has focused on the ancient call which is heard most distinctively in the institutions and through the experiences of the dark side of the biblically based Western and American cultures. The article, "An Outlaw's Theology," was published in the journal _Cross Currents_ (June 2011). A companion piece, "A vision of coupled presence," appeared in the journal _Theology and Sexuality (2011)._ Also available on line are the novel, "Kill the Dove!" about the Sixties and prison, and "Outlaw or American Patriot?" a trial memoir. See, other writings, interviews, the play, "Peace Crimes," etc. at: http://outlaw-visions.net

Links:

The "Minnesota 8"  
"Peace and War in the Heartland"

"Earthfolk"

Outlaw Visions

**Excerpt from** : **"** A Vision of Coupled Presence" Theology and Sexuality, 17.1 (2011), 31-49.

As I entered my elder years, I realized that in the different phases of my life my interpretation of the relationship between Adam and Eve drove me to either new insights or profound despair concerning my understanding of femininity and expression of masculinity. Looking back I discerned that the objective of the Garden of Eden story was to answer the question, "When in the presence of a woman, what do I sense?" My answer in each phase reflected and enabled me to transform my sense of masculinity.

Over time, my interpretations justified a relationship of dominance and dominion, then of political and theological revolt, shifting to assessing the story as idiotic and meaningless, and finally to an insight into the hidden revelation of the story, one that presently challenges me more deeply than any other and is source for a vision of coupled presence.
Part 1

Q: _As a man, when in the presence of a woman, what do I sense?_

Since I am a white-hair, let me explore the answers to this question as I would have as a single young man, a married father, a divorced man, and now as an elder.

.......................................

Elder Intimacy: The Beloved and Coupled Presence

As with my wife, most elder women with feminist leanings could shed every aspect of biblical patriarchy except the ontology of monotheism. In prison I had met a Shadow Mother and after developing a methodology based upon that experience I sensed the presence of a Shadow Mother in Genesis 2-3. I further realized that Genesis 1's "let us" passage offered an ontological insight into the polytheistic presence during Creation. This was consonant with the implication of the biblical God's assertion that He was _one among many_ as He commanded, "I am the Lord your God....You shall have _no other gods_ before me.... you shall not bow down to them or serve them." Biblical monotheism is a choice. Polytheism is the ontological reality. Yet worshipping Her is the most challenging step for most feminists (men and women) to take. For me, unless I could worship Her in her, I would never be able to worship the Him in me.

Elder women and Mother Goddess

As an elder, I met women for whom the answer to _Why are we together?_ was to "Rock the kosmos!" by claiming intimacy in terms of embracing their full humanity. Some with similar backgrounds were thea-ologists. Others sensed that they would find their full femaleness by embracing their maleness, through me and other men. Together, we moved into an unbounded, unmapped and wilding place where we intentionally confronted the depths of ourselves, mainly through improvised rituals.

Over time innovative language fragments and novel images emerged as we experimented with rituals of coupling. We discussed how to create safe ritual zones through which we could enter the depths of our Shadow worlds and emerge back into the Light. Our couplings required a fresh approach to our bodies: as singular, embraced and integrated. Our quest was to embody the world and all time in the now—to evoke a mythic moment. As a male this was my first female step, much like a women embodying seed to incarnate another human life. For her it was a first manly step in that she had to conquer her deep fear of exposing herself to my chthonic sexual violence—she was Eve facing Adam, fearlessly. We grasped that the Adam and Eve story's masked revelation was about the creative power resident in intimacy—sacred sexuality. In counterpoint, we didn't want to honor the biblical tradition in any way and felt that our rituals actually exorcised the millennia of woman and Mother Goddess–hating energy that Genesis spewed. We set forth to heal one another, to become whole, to become the ecstatic oneness that emerges when two commune.

We meditated, prepared ourselves to boldly enter unexplored dimensions. We dedicated ourselves to each other. We blessed one another. We kissed in trust. We became moon and sun, rain and dirt, fire and wind. She was me and I was her, deepening our individuality by plunging into a _we_.

We held our bodies as intimacy maps to be explored. As crone and coot, as witch and wizard, as so old that we were childishly young once again, we kissed and pranced casting ourselves into a magical world such that all around us were the many dimensions of life itself, the many selves each of us was within; and it was a wondering that took us wandering into the Shadow and the Light.

We explored our genital selves, reclaiming them not only as parts of our bodily whole but as portals to open to venture into the depths of our personal intimacy. With humility, I communed with her womb. The act of intimate coupling became a search to manifest a wondrous presence of us as a unique "we." Just as prison sapped me of personal identity and reduced me to inmate 8867-147, so, in the reverse, within the precious intimate embrace a novel coupled presence emerged. We called our communing self by a sweet lover's name—"Beloved!"

My elder answer then is: When I meet a woman, I sense the Mother Goddess within myself. I also sense how she experiences herself as the Father God within herself when she meets me.

Coupled Presence

I celebrate my precious Beloved: The sheer delicacy of her undoes me. I who am bone and muscle, the conqueror, the smithy at the forge, manipulating the life we share, find myself but a whimper in her ear, a melting of heart on her lips. She comes to me and her mere presence, sighted from afar, buckles my knees and my mind is no longer mine, my heart so much bigger than I could ever imagine. For there is a healing that she is, a closing up of open-ended parts of me, a suturing together of flesh rendered asunder by blows and battles. In her presence I am humbled, dissembled, dashed into shallow pools of water. Yet so majestic am I when we embrace, as I am so full of her and me that I expand cosmically and sense myself as eternal, never dying, a precious coupled presence so fierce and formidable which we have unleashed with simple, even mundane words, words of enticement, of incantation, of seduction, of ecstasy—"Come to me, my precious beloved!"

On my elder journey, I have found the most pleasurable, ecstatic, humbling, maddening, and hilarious sense of my maleness as I sense a woman as the beckoning smile that invites me to receive her embrace and so begin the exploration of all that a male can be as dancing with all that a woman is. Within coupled presence intimacy flowers and all that we humans can be is embodied and manifested.

**Excerpt from** "Nihil Obstat" (on Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/243971)

(More...)

"This is disturbing." Sharon has said this often these last months. Jude nods in agreement.

"Is it the sense of personal distance, of _personal space_ as some call it, or what?"

Jude purses his lips but admits nothing.

They had shared images. They wanted to avoid jargon so they sought to "just talk, babble on."

"I know there's something in me, talking with me, actually arguing—sounds schizoid, for sure!—but it goes on, sometimes all day, that I'm," and she pauses, not so much to capture the right word but to confront the feeling, that feeling which happens _then_ : _then_ being those times "it" happens..."that I'm not supposed to get _that close_."

"Skin," Jude begins, "it's like we're unrolling skin. Miles and miles of skin. Not wrapping us but coiling, somehow, down and down...which feels like up and up—that happens to you?"

She grits her teeth and locks her lips.

"It simply _more_."

"Fuller."

"Right. _Fuller_."

"When I come to you—hands and fingers—it's like I'm walking, no, really like flying, flying low over the ground, like a blimp looking for subs, I can see below the surface...not you, not just you, not you with your luscious butt! _Ha_. But you _as_ me." Stops. Halts.

Iron door slammed shut.

"I know that feeling."

"Is this worship?"

"I think so."

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

"Do you want to live forever?"

He told me that, too.

Was he nuts?

Sure.

Like us?

Maybe.

Living forever.

What dies is this cock. If I keep it, it dies with my body. If I give it to you, it lives—assuming you outlive me, feminine statistics and all that! _Ha_.

But it's not just us. Not just two sucked into one ego.

No. Of course not.

What?

Sometimes. Don't you feel that way. We just intensify our being together, intensify our, magnify our _separateness_. After all, who do we share this with?

Is that really important?

I think so.

Maybe tomorrow, but not today.

You're such a die-hard optimist!

My breasts become yours, but when you're sucking me in this fuller way I see you, I know it's you, but I've this cosmic feeling, this vastness, like I'm the Great Mother of ...of everything, one, _everyone_ , like I have a thousand breasts, like I know why they call it "The Milky Way."

I'll admit that.

What?

I'm sucking more than you.

Other names?

Names. Faces. Breasts. At moments— _Does this bother you?_

Somewhat.

I see.

It _is_ difficult—the names, that is.

What can we do?

I'm not sure. Don't want to obliterate names, do we?

"THX 123" or whatever? _Fuck that!_

Yeah. _Ha_. Not that.

At times I want my cunt to be Sharon's pussy and no one else's. Just like I want to blow Jude, not someone else. Tell you, I had that disconnect with Pierce, suppressed I'll grant, but had _that_. Don't want that.

I'll cop to that.

You want me to cop _that_...

Always!

Nasty boy!

(They laugh. Merry laughter.)

When he slips inside her—for he always liked to come in slowly, as if his dick were easing into slippers, he liked the caginess of it all, the slithery pace, incremental sense of pleasure and pain and presence—so when he slips inside her he waits for that deathless moment, that bliss on the other side of Rock 'n Roll...for it is Rock 'n Roll as he hears the drums beat as he shifts from sly thief into slick Cat Burglar, stealing her diamonds, stroking her clitoris and dropping her _Ooohs_ and _Aaaahs_ into his black bag...prowling, he slinks then bursts out into the ballroom, there where she is dancing, wearing amazing masks—funny, grotesque, goofy, even quite demur, waltzing with a thousand masked men, twirling and spinning from arm to arm..but he is _Zorro_ and pounces from the balcony to the floor and with svelte swishes of his cape and deft and daring slashes with his terribly swift sword, he slices... _Aha!_...unmasks her. And with each mask cut away so do they, these others, masked men, all disappear, fade and become—not dead-men on the floor—but become him...fade and seep into him, _Victory!_ as he has her in a thousand ways as unmasking her bounteous ways...a fury, a flurry, a ferocious whoop and holler and he is _Gone_!

_Gone_...but she remains there laughing, a ruffling raucous low titter...a bit of mirth that sucks up his fantasy: slurps it with a big howling _smack!_ of her Southern Mouth—and he's _Returned!..._ kissing his cock with the thousand lips of her Delta Daughters...dancing round his Maypole, strewn with ribbons of his memory, pennons of sperm, playing and wrapping themselves in wispy threads of semen... laughter: horrifying, fascinating, terrifying, enchanting, deathless-laughter... _howling_.

She likes his story.

He is aghast at hers, at how orgasmic he is turned, again!

"Worship. That's really a tough word to get behind in public conversation. I mean, if I told a bud you worshipped my cock and I worshipped your cunt... _wow_ , what do you think?"

She shakes her head, a "maybe crazy" shake.

"But it's exactly _that_. That's what I have now, what we have now, is really each other. This presence is present. Gotta give some insight her to Pete and Pierce."

"But why didn't they, why did they need each other, I mean, _males_?"

Long time in between...coffee and cake and getting dressed and then undressed and showered and washed and deciding to drive into town for some more wine, ordering a pizza—both kidding each other about "pepperoni and sausage no more!" aging "veggie heads" and drinking diet soda, but just foolish banter as is all "in between" silliness, grasping that they needed such in-between moments.

"I've asked myself about Pierce." But she stops him.

"No, I have to tell you. I got myself into the Two-for-One. I liked the feel of it, the totality of it. I mean I never understood being called "a good piece of ass," but then I did. I liked him up my butt as I blew the other guy." She is halted by the memory, a tingle of pleasure stirs her bottom lust.

"It was when it got reversed, or inverted, whatever's the right term. My sucking him and him sucking this other guy or them switching, then it felt different. Like I was just hanging on. Like I was an after-thought to their doing it to each other. Like that."

" _I never did that_." Came too fast upon her close. Revealed too much. She doesn't miss a beat. Not a stroke.

"Such a liar," dismissive, unimpressed...a bit crushed.

He can't recover. He can't stop himself—he wants to lie and lie and lie and lie— _She's gotta believe me. She's gotta._

"I don't believe a word you're saying...and _not_ saying."

Verdict read: _"The woman made me do it!"_

Ranting with anger and vitriol and _nuke-the-bastard_ and _hang 'im high!_ froth—"How can you say that? That's what we've left behind. Or supposed we've left. A fucking lie. You sit there, clothed from toenail to split-hair, just sit there and lie at me...lie and lie. Jude, you're one son-of-a-bitch...or not a bitch but a fucking ball-less guy, father, sure, of Father God, ole stud Yahweh, all you males are in one fucking conspiracy. _Goddam, you Jude!"_

"Bless me Father for I have sinned." Jude in mock prostration, appealing to that of The Father within her.

She atones: "I've been dick-mad all my life. I lied to myself about it, a fucking million times. I wanted to steal all the dicks in the world...and make them serve me.

_Thou shalt not kill...hell_ , Father I killed. Hundreds, maybe ten thousand, a million or more. Napalm words. Nuclear humiliations. Axing put-downs. Anyway I could.

_Thou shalt not steal...wahoo!_ Father, I stole, filched the greatest treasure: their balls, golden balls. Beat them in games and snatched them away. Emasculated them! Left them impotent. I was supreme! Grand! Stupendous!

I took their balls and swallowed them. Gulped them down. Chewed them. Cracked them open and sucked them dry. I was the Biggest Ball-Buster in town.

_Thou shalt not commit adultery...tsk_ , _tsk_ , Father, I committed adultery. I stole their husbands from them. I drew them away with my honeyed desire. I robbed their imaginations and left them cock-less in Gaza—ha, ha, get that, Father?! A great pun, but that's it. My greatest sin—I cold-cocked their men and slung them over my shoulders. Never touched a woman, Father. Gotta give me some indulgence there. Ha!"

Should I give her absolution?

"I've never _had_ a man?"

"I think that's a way of seeing it."

"Because no man knows how to love a woman?"

"No, my darling, Jude, it's what we're doing, because no man knows how to worship a woman."

"Or a woman, a man?"

"Has to be."

All this, leading to habit and ritual. These Breathing moments between them were too raw to take back into the "real" world, the clock world, the world of Lovers.

Ritual. Knowing that it was a creative act. Constructing a world. Tying the sensate to the spectral...linking, entwining.

It began with the purposeful omission of the word "Love."

"That word upon which The West believes it is built. The Love of God."

"Amen."

_Love_ being for them the distracting word, the utterance of The Fall—Adam _sentenced_ to cleave to his wife...this cleaving but a condemnation for bearing children, they to love and cleave...this called Love.

Ritual.

Sharon pays attention to Jude's body.

Jude pays attention to Sharon's body.

Ritual.

_Attention_.

Not so much when together, mostly when in sighting distance.

More, when far away. When the devilish collective imagination slips them the word "Love" and expects them to forget each other.

At this time, placing his own fingers upon his cheek and lifting off her kiss, one single solitary simple kiss...raising it up and blessing the world with it, all about and all throughout, letting it descend upon his lips, alight and then dissolve upon his, all this time translocating himself to her side, there to be for her whatever it is she needs this moment, an act of a combining ritual thus creating the whole which is greater than the sum of its parts...this their daily practice.

She twirling a strand of her hair. Feeling it as he twirls it. As upon her he lovingly and lustfully and with insanity flashing wildly in his eyes as he ejaculates, such moments, this coming to her, she flying out from every tip of every hair to be present with him: a Medusa of intensity, of fierceness, of a shock of snakes...kundalini and spinal, riding the column of her erotic self up from her Delta out through the cirrus Clouds of her hairy head...she wraps him up, enfolds him, suckles him with every strand, exposing herself, opening herself so vulnerable, permitting him to suck a thousand sucks upon her self, so being Nurture and Drink: _Black Water_.

Ritual.

Sharon intends Jude.

Jude intends Sharon.

Ritual.

Intention.

Upon waking they had begun the practice of allowing the other to emerge from sleep, and then slowly come together. With varying intensities and diverse approaches but every day, each day coming to each other making skin contact—a contact which hails the other as another, someone in his or her space, someone to invite...into one's skin and there to breathe.

So, they awake. Each attends to their morning necessities, and once existence on Earth is reaffirmed they _intend_ the other.

Intending for them is prying open their minds to envision the other, to picture them and so allow the other to float into one's mind.

They move towards each other— _Hello—_ then they name the other. Touching a face or an arm. Just a point by ritual, just a point. The merest of touches, "Hello, Jude." "Hello, Sharon."

They move towards embrace.

Hands now full palms upon the other: cheek, hair, shoulders.

Bodies pressing: knees touching, chests abutting, arms latched.

Hugging. Pulling closer. Closer as their minds and bodies merge—intentionally opening each to the other and welcoming the day. Clearly realizing that they are creating the day.

"You are the Mother of All. All life flows from you and to you and through you."

"You are Father of All. The sun rises and the moon sets and the fire inside the plants and the hunger inside the animals and the glory of the rocks and the sky and the water all are within you and process through you."

"I praise you."

"I praise you."

Ritual.

Sharon is moonlight.

Jude, sunlight.

Ritual.

There are days—special days—where thunder strikes at sunrise. She, more often than he—so they have noted and kidded—is the moon refusing to die as she explodes into sunlight and shakes his world around and around leaving him like a corpse suddenly resurrected...with eyes so wide that they do not see, and with a heart pounding so hard that he cannot hear, and with limbs so trembling and exhausted and squeezed of all their night life that he knows he cannot rise from the bed, that the day will never be here...but then the magic: she shifts him, rotates his totem, upside downs his world and like a blustering, untamed, chaotic oil fire gushing at sea so with the noise and clamor of the unquenchable sizzle of fire and oil and water, so is he brought to sunburst...and as she leaves him he is simply amazed...more, he is eternally grateful. Hums, "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine!"

Such are the rough drafts of their ritual moments, once Breathing together.

(More...)

Skin.

She lies next to him. So, so aware of being _next to_. So aware of her skin. And of his skin.

She strokes: it is the river of her messages this skin.

What is his skin becomes her skin.

That moment they touch— _What is a touch?—_ she has tried to answer it for him, for herself.

...it is like a fullness...like drinking a glass of water, at the start there is the shock of the difference: wet-dry, cold-hot, moist-dry...then that sense of presence, of the other within you, not inside you but within where you hold it: water flooding my mouth, still separate but inside, and so the desire begins, always the desire to have, to be quenched, to be satisfied, to let it slowly glide down my throat and then plunge into my belly...but the fear: always the fear of drowning, of choking—way back in my childish brain the family story: "Drowned in a cup of water"...telling me to be careful, to be more than careful when handling the baby, giving it a cup of water: _Drowned in a cup of water_... do such things ever leave your mind?

...that's it: the first touch...then there's the briefest of hesitations: _Enough?_

...I fill the glass again, maybe half-full, waiting, waiting: _Do I want to drink?_...something within always saying, even for the briefest of moments, _Never enough! Drink!_ And another: _You'll drown!_...so it is, so it is when I touch you: lightning thoughts, flashes, but they're there...yet I wade ashore, touching you, stroking up and down your body, like walking the beach's edge...having come from the ocean feeling sharp pains in my chest, my lungs are not used to this alien air, this alien land, this _you_ which I now approach, discover, invade— _youareamazing!_ —I steel myself for invasion, for I get excited...personal, hidden, intimate excitement, my mouth begins to slaver and my hands become moist, for I am water, this alien stuff which borders your body and so I come, move like a mist, a fog, stroking your thighs, feeling your muscles, watching you twitch as you sense the pleasure of my being, my presence, knowing inside myself that you are mystified, baffled, unsure, unable to discern my intent—invader or discoverer?

...I don't want you to know and I don't let you know, _but I know!_...moving, I come to your belly and the fine muscles of your chest, I romp in your skimpy hairs, twist them and make them jump-ropes for _my_ pleasure...pleasuring myself as I know your fear begins to mount: _Is she paying attention to me?_

...I can hear this wail, this plaint, your cry-baby whimper, so I move on and up to the delight of your lips, kiss you with tenderness, and kiss you with surprise, peck and teasingly bite your lip, _ah!_ sensing the arousal within your mouth, the hunger of your tongue, I meet you and we promenade _, boogie-woogie!_ , _cha cha cha!_...we mirthfully laugh, for now I have you, now I have your inner skin, this my first conquest, of your serpent tongue, your spectral self, here in exposed desire, so soft, so easily pierced, chained, so easily snatched, I could snatch your tongue and you wouldn't know the theft because your eyes are becoming my eyes: fascinated you peer into me and I let you peer down into me, deep down into my Cauldron, where you watch me stir you, hand upon your penis I stir...with the breath of my desire, stir and raise you up, truly conjure up the fire in your blood, the ancient fire which hides behind the cells of your flaccid soon at full "Attention!" penile body.

... _Oh!_ This is a great joy, a great bedevilment...your tongue, the first part of your flesh which becomes mine, that spelunking strap which is tethered to your spine and to your brain, which my teasing dips and darts transform into a chord, striking musical chord: rhythms messaging to you, "Come out! Come out, Jude. Come out and play!"

...so you do, march yourself out, strutting yourself, all Band Major and the thump and thud of your cocked baton raised high, aloft with dramatic clash and strumming of the air so do you call me, entertain me, boast of your ability to have me—for this is how you forget your skin, forget that you are not me, beguiling and buffooning yourself by shouting that I am yours, "Sharon is mine!"

...all that is happening is my drawing your skin to me, my slipping under your skin, inserting myself so innocuously with a French kiss of your tongue and then I am like your own saliva slithering inside you, mingling within you, to become you, blood of your blood, cell of your cell, desire of your desire

...so am I yours as the lust which I bring strides out to march in counter-stroke with the beat of your band—oh, your pounding heart, the break-out of dancing beads upon your brow! oh, how delicious you become!

.. and I lick you, I can't but lick you, I can't stop licking you...I'm lost, I've entered your woods and am myself lost, for as I have invaded so have I been invaded, as I have kissed, so have I been kissed.

...there is a blankness, a moment of absolute non-feeling—my hands are not my hands, my knees knock not against my knees, my belly is not there, my tongue is not my tongue...it is then _We are skin!—_ boundary to both inner and outer worlds...it is then _We are eternal!—_ for it's the moment, the instant, that time which is not time but which is a knowing and a feeling and a fulfillment.

... _arrrgh_! the agony, the misery, yet the pulsating throb of _We!_ —of the presence of _we._

He knows. Jude knows. It is their common voice. Their common tale. The fright they share at how similar their stories are, their images, their words but more, the presence in that moment, at that time— _we..._ "Not you and me, but _we_. Truth?

So it is.

Skin is we.

They Lie no more.

(More...)

"It seems there's just one thing we know nothing about."

" _Just one?_ " Mocking his presumptiveness.

He flinches—itself a mock response.

"We attend to our bodies. This is something new. But not radically new. It's new because it _is_ a way of living forever and not dying."

"Saint Pierce be praised!" Softly uttered, part sarcasm, part humbled insight.

"Verily! Saint Pete, too." Then Jude gets up from his recliner and steps over to her end of the couch, there where she so often comforts herself, nestled, whether dressed or naked, there she so often sits reading, listening to music, but always working on being present—on Breathing.

This time she reacts with those slight communications of eyebrows and cheeks and hands lifted from the task of the moment as if she is perplexed by his movement. She thought they were in their private mode but "Guess not!" she says to herself.

Sharon warmly smiles at Jude as he sits down next to her on the sofa.

"We're so much in the conscious mode," with a pause that forewarns her that he is already into deep thought, coming to her from some distant planet. "See, conscious. Like, like everything we've been working on is in the real world." Pauses. Brow furrowed. Sharon realizes that it is merely an accident of his universe that she is sitting there, for he is off somewhere talking to someone else or some other group or something, "Like, it's been amazing, hasn't it?" She folds her hands: _Is he really waiting for my answer?_...Jude rolls back into the couch, looking straight out into the room, distant sighting. "Nah, what a terrible word 'real.' I mean what's _real_? Nah, don't want to go there." He abruptly turns back towards her, this time he is fully attending to her. Sharon feels him lift her skin with every word.

"Dreaming." He halts, like screeching brakes, mild snort, salted with a humorous insight: " _Baby, you're a dream. You're my Dream Baby._ " Laughing as he says this to her, a small laughter carrying amusement. Before she can respond, "Do you get it? Do you get it?" A bit more childishly excited than usual. Punctuated with a, "Huh?"—a punctuation that chokes a gagging laughter from her, "What?" as if spitting up a cigarette butt unknowingly hidden in a mistaken cup of cold coffee.

He smiles—idiot grin.

_What?_ inside herself.

"Dreaming!" as Jude jumps up from the couch. She sees him as being catapulted by some mysterious force up and he's standing. Does a silly jig—hop and step and kicks his heels. It's all so silly to her. But she knows he's hot onto something.

He turns and throws out his hands to her...hands of invitation. She grasps them and stands. He pulls her close.

"Guys always say _You're my Dream Baby_ and all that. Seems like gibberish. Seems demeaning at times. I mean the Barbie Doll stuff and Eve as a Bad Dream _et cetera, et cetera_...but there's that "grain of truth," again, you _are_ my Dream Baby...and I'm yours. Now," with a finality, "Now, what about that!"

You want to dream, together?

Why not?

Is that possible?

We breathe when asleep, right?

"See, maybe it's a guy thing, ya know. Women like to say that. Maybe there's some truth." He throws the sentiment out, not expecting her to play catch.

"See, you've made me wonder. _Often_. What is it that you've been dreaming?" He does pause to see if this is a hook for a small-mouth trout.

She narrows her eyes—signs of her intensity—he knows she won't say anything, not right now.

"Women dream. Right? And men aren't supposed to." He halts. Walks around a bit. Akin to a dog circling to do its morning duty. The image does not ride either's imagination.

Jude had to stop. Something inside him formed a stabbing pain. _Gas?_ to himself. But what it was didn't matter because he is half-crippled with pain...he haltingly steps towards the bathroom.

"Something I can do?"

He couldn't answer—just waved her away.

She watches him half-drag himself out of the room, left leg with a quirk and a slight gimp. _Was it the sausage?_ This morning Jude had eaten like a horse, especially the German sausage he so loved as Saturday morning treat. _Vegetarian mortal sin, alas!_

Sharon returned to her reading.

Jude was a healthy horse, this the image the doctor gave him; he shared it with Sharon. _Macho-man forever!_ As such, she wasn't in the least alarmed. Not that health hadn't become a constant item of discussion as it was for all their ageing friends. But she had let it stand: _sausage_.

Then, after a quarter-hour—not timing him but then having looked up at the end of the chapter to check the time: eighteen-minutes or there-abouts, and Jude not having called out a word or come out to say, "Going up-stairs," or anything like that.

She found him curled up on the bathroom floor, not just fetal but twisted and bent as if he was part-way through some contortion of turning himself inside out. She did not have to ask about the pain, he was totally silent—the savage grimace on his face told of his inner torture. She feared that he was being compressed by some powerful external force...but was resisting.

"911. Please hurry, I think it's a heart attack!"

Total panic, but the words came out. The trembling fingers and shaking arm had found their mark on the three buttons. Once done, Sharon realizes that her heart is crammed in her throat, a fierce headache pounding directly into her forehead...this, and more...that she is _scared_.

Somehow— _How?—_ a great malevolent force has entered their house. Something so evil that it slipped by her eyesight on every level: sensate and non-sensate...she drops to her knees, hits the floor with a thump-thud and finds herself inside her mind scurrying for some antidote...early childhood training as she is praying, "Jesus save him! Dear God help me! Oh, God why?"... a hundred times recited, moaned through chattering teeth, shaking body, she can hear her bones rattle one against the other, hear her internal fright form its own name: _Death_!

She is, at this moment, totally bereft, totally without comfort from any dimension, feeling the terrifying smallness of her being, sensing herself as a piece of crumpled paper blown along the street. Images assail her of her insignificance, of her unworthiness...she cries, breaks out into crackling sobs—no one there to hear her...but she knows there is, there is that presence, sensing it as Presence, a something come to crush her, "Measly worm!"—a phrase from somewhere, but not the words as much as the full body feeling, seeing herself as a worm the kids play with, that they torture, that they slice in half to watch it maniacally squirm and twist in agonizing torture...foolishly and helplessly and fated never to connect with its other half, ever again.

The para-medics find her so kneeling. The front door being an unlatched screen this time of year. They are not surprised...possibly a tad surprised that she was not kneeling next to the body, but they were trained not to ask such questions, trained to appraise the moment and get to the victim.

She is still kneeling, sobbing, as Jude is carried out on the stretcher.

She wakes to their alien presence as a strong hand presses itself firmly but gently upon her shoulder, "M'am"—just that word, sound, soft but authoritative greeting, now a command, "M'am" again, with a slight shake, Sharon lifts her head....

(More...)

The angelic Seraphim takes her by the hand; she rises. There is joyful song all about. A hymn without words but yet one of praise, of deep passionate praising, such that she knows that it is the song of her Sweetheart calling.

Here, the fiery angel, winged hand upon hers, lifts her, for they rise, flutter up and into the sound, the calling, the attractive power which she suddenly knows sustains them...more, more than sustains, which creates them.

Around her enfolds a cloud of luminescent, pulsating colors: vibrancy alive—every conceivable hue and tone flashing through its visual presence as an ardor, a devotion for her, for all around, for the adorer who calls her forth.

This vibrancy becomes part of her self. She is immersed in an iridescence that communicates to her an adoring craving for her, which communicates an honoring worship of her own self, of her body, of her singular presence.

She rises—no longer sensing up from down, more rising in the sense of a filling-up, of a swelling up, of a magnificent unrolling of her self into many selves as simultaneously into a deeper self—floating in depthless Black Water!... _Ah_ , in every fiber of her being: every molecule, atom, muscle, nerve and mode of presence conscious and sub-conscious, is she now fuller: _more!_...now impassioned...now burstingly worshipped.

_She Breathes with Jude_.

"You are the Fullness of Time. The Great Mother of All the Living." Sounds, not words, not a body, not seen, but surging his presence surging throughout her.

"You are the Cauldron of Fire. The Tree of Life whose roots hold, cuddle the Earth to your nurturing breasts. The Cloudless Sky whose Innocence makes perfect all that is Creation."

"You are my Beloved."

In this swell of passion, this embrace so drenching, she senses the adoration, the special tenderness, the inexpressible joy of being beloved. _Beloved_...she is bursting.

"You are All That Is. You are the Present. The Moment Filled. You are Birth."

All about honor her. Revere her. Bless her every sense with a sense of goodness in the sense of rightness in the sense of completion...of perfection.

"You are the Perfect One."

Then her Beloved comes. Piercing her. Moving through her with every pleasure.

Handsome of sight.

Majestic of fleshly presence.

Powerful in his stare.

Indestructible in his Heart.

She knows him instantly as Courage, as Fearless, as Triumphant, as Magnificent.

He is at her side. In the same moment, he is inside her. Inside her through his embrace, drawing her to his golden flesh, flesh which becomes her own, she now all silvery glow and ecstatic throb for theirs is one heart joined in desire, coupled in hungered passion, unified in the singularity of their Devoted Passion, each for the other...minds as one, spirits integrated, souls meshed...she knows his insatiable passion as he leaves her in his now _not-present_ moment... _ah!_ she swoons, shakes, trembles, dissembles throughout time and space...no longer inhaling the sweet odor of his kiss, no longer tasting the seduction of his subtle tongue, no longer pressing her softness against the steeled-flex of his engorged body... _no longer_....

"Ma'am?" Bewilderment. It rockets towards her. She distantly hears the question, spies the question mark floating, hurtling towards her—she cannot escape its impact!

"Ma'am?"

Jaw unattractively ajar, like a dying crone at death's door, Sharon stands, rather allows herself to move upwards, up and standing and slightly holding the hand of the paramedic: young male, descriptionless face but overwhelming there as a helper...she responds to his caring gesture, stands and snaps to, all in a simple moment's time for him, he aware of the effects of shock, of the sudden capture by sickness and death of so many, so this lady is okay: _Doing okay_ , in his own mind...he draws her up and walks her towards the ambulance.

Despite his own instincts, that she sit down and rest, go to bed, maybe take a tranquilizer, he knows she must ride to the hospital with them—she as the source for information about this man... _Her husband?..._ information about his insurance.

(More...)

By the time Sharon finishes with Admissions, she is without feeling—observing herself as if disembodied and floating above, moving along the ceiling, tracking her physical self...as it walks so does she move.

So does Sharon enter the room. Step through the portal and observe Jude. It is a distanced observation. She not bringing her heart with her—left somewhere in deep lock-down, herself not aware of the lack of her own heartbeat, stepping across the threshold into the world of machines...hearing the beep, scanning the monitors with their gossipy digital conversations, a monologue, stand-up comedians these machines, sucking Jude, suckling his blood and siphoning his life force, slurping it and re-cycling it, transubstantiating him into other unknown elementals—medicines with colors and thicknesses, liquids filling up the exterior body with which they had sheathed Jude...he now machine carapaced, alive she knows now only as a machine, most of herself is not unaware of the magicalness of the realm into which she has— _by what measure, by what clock?—_ "just stepped."

_Bad signs_ : The doctor's hesitation to turn towards her, as marked in the moments it takes for him to respond to the nurse's sighting of her: _wife, mistress, mother, lover, sister?_ Sharon vaguely noticing the nurse's frozen response, fighting off a grimace, professionally wiping away the give-away look of hopelessness, nodding ever so practiced a nod towards the doctor, then dropping her eyes onto Jude's arm where she rearranges some bandages and tweaks some adjustments which are her make-do protection from what the doctor must do. He turns, "Mrs. Schutt?"

She turns towards the angel, knowing him now as Archangel, in his own majesty with legions behind him, she turns towards him and with a wordless sob questions, _Why?_

"Mrs. Schutt?" Firmly, but gently; he reads her shock.

Sharon's head jerks up and towards him, swiveling as if she herself had grasped her head from behind, clutched her own jaw and firmly snapped it up and towards the speaker...jerked away because she feared any longer to look at Jude.

She smiles. Innocent, idiot smile...one recovering and not knowing what else to do but to smile a child-like smile of no consequence.

"Mrs. Schutt, has your husband had any recent illness? Or trauma of any kind?"

Sharon steps into the reality. Left hand to her lips, a slight smile and an exhale of bemused titter. "Oh, no. I'm _not_..." and she fights off the desire to surrender to the Obliteration, "I'm not his wife. I'm, I'm...a _close friend_ , a long time friend, but we just met, recently..." She is fully aware of her embarrassment— _Stupid!_ to herself..."I don't know," firmly in control, composed, "about his medical history. We've been together, but we haven't talked about that."

The doctor steps away from the bed and towards her. Stands close in an intimate, personal space, but he does not touch her. He is not there to comfort, but to communicate, to inform.

"I have to tell you. We're perplexed. He appears to be quite healthy. There's nothing indicating a heart attack, which we first expected. All his vitals are good. No scars or signs of operations. That's why I need to ask...anything traumatic...even emotionally traumatic?"

How else does the Lie give birth to the Truth except through trauma? For him to truly know her, to truly move beyond love, being her lover, to know Sharon in the depths of her person, her existence, as woman, female, mother....as Beloved...so he had to face her deepest darkness—drink deeply of her Black Water.

She manifests herself as Death. Dark Mother. Horrifying Evil Witch. For it is Love which requires Death, is defined by it— _Dying Forever Love_.

She loves him unto death!

In her Dark Heart, she is now relishing her Abandonment by him, rejoicing in her Obliteration from his Memory, savoring his Departure, his Sundering of their embrace, his Escape... _Escape!_

Darkly, so she knows her piercing power— _drowns him in_ _Black Water_.

"Can you get in touch with his family?" The doctor asks, hoping that she will gather the information he needs.

"Umm. Yes. I can." Closing off the doctor; giving him what he wants. Dismissing him, knowing that he would never understand.

"Anything. Remember, anything which might have traumatized him." Hesitant. Unsure, but trained to ask because of the patient's age. "Be sure to ask about his sex life. Any dramatic changes." Delivered with mailman courtesy.

Sharon nods.

Alone with Jude. Standing beside his bed. " _Impotent_. They want to know if you're impotent."

Am I?

(More...)

The Archangel hands Jude a shield. It is a new body; a new flesh. It is hammered in muscular hardness: bronzed. From his eyes daggers fly. Out from his mouth is pillaging fire. Into his hand is placed his staff, his spear, his magical penis. So armored, so hardened...The Father's Warrior Son, _Jude Schutt,_ is once again potent!

Beside his bed she sits. Her left hand lightly upon his. She accepts that they have been denied bodily speech. She worries—a tapeworm tunneling through her mind—that she might have, that they might have missed the moment. _Did we not see it?_

There is nothing here, so Sharon intuits, but the trauma of the insight Jude was about to share with her...he was bubbling, excited, with a glint of madness in his eyes...how else but to enter this stage?

_Drown him in Black Water!_..."Oh, no...never!" she shouts out to the empty room. Scarce would anyone present, however, have grasped the majesty of the unfolding moment for now Sharon is facing the Truth of who she is as Black Water. She is the Dark Mother grieving at the grave of her son—but a child whom she has slain! _Infanticide._ Murdered because He wants no challengers, no suitors to compete for Her affections. Dark Father on His throne at Black Water's bottom.

"Yes." This time, "Yes!" as she stabs him through the heart...kills Jude this Son whom the Father rejects.

_Black Water._ What Pete and Pierce found as they became present: themselves as Cain and Abel...brothers killing brothers, each vying for the Love of their Dark Father, Warrior King.

"Uuugggghhhh!" Sharon has knowledge, suffocating knowledge of all this in a terribly confusing way, one that tears at the fabric of her flesh, which manifests itself in a horrible gulp of sadness...herself being swallowed by a force, a malicious, evil, ill-intended presence that wants her as dead as Jude is here slain.

_She_... must be...must drink... must embody... must become.... _is Black Water!_

("Mother—Dead in Childbirth.")

("Child—Stillborn.")

_Nothing is easy!_...Pierce's words. _Now?_ _Where? Why?_

At Black Water's deepest depth, she hears his words as a threatening challenge. His tone of superiority—"Of course you will fail, mere useful woman!"—stabs her in the back. She knows what she must do...softens her heart, dies to herself her at Dark Water bottom, dying to that of the Dark Father within her to...to...a kind word, a sweet yet embolding word, sounds coming into and through her heart, opening her wom...it is that of the Great Mother within her, setting forther her course of action, "To rise from the Black Water, you must accept your fate—drink deeply the Black Water... _dream fully_ the Warrior Dream!"

_Dreaming the final Warrior Dream_... _Back then,_ Jude had been slain...slain by his God, Father God, laid down and slain within the Biblical Warrior Dream, for it was within this Dream—so Sharon knows, so she knows—that he was made whole and healed and formed as _perfect male_ —he who lives without women—Jude as the Son of Adam, as the Cock...formed to see only his penis, only it to be worshipped. So Sharon knows—knows as she slips, for the last time, within his Warrior Dream...dreaming Genesis: _In the Beginning_...

"It is you, Sharon, who are delusional. You who act like the Daughters of Lilith. As if you were created by God!...But it is not so! You are created by me, _from me_ —you exist within me. I am your all. It is I who you shall worship. Must obey. The Father does not speak directly to you, _only_ to me."

She hears this Dream's chatter, it recycles again and again, sonorously. She had lain down beside him before, _back then_ , during their First Meeting at the college reunion. Lain down because he needed her, so she thought. That he wanted her, so she felt. That he lusted for her body, so she believed. That he had found her loveable and worthy of his most heartfelt love, so she hoped.

As she now Dreams with Jude, Sharon feels his psychic energy drain, observes the pallor blanch his cheeks as astral blood hemorrhages...she so feels and understands for she is becoming him, becoming this Jude, becoming this Son of Adam...she is surrendering herself, her body, her soul, her spirit, surrendering and becoming Eve, again—lying down next to him, feeling his pain, participating in his Dream...she now Daughter of Eve, child willing to Forget her Mother, willing to offer up her cunt for Obliteration, willing to accept Love in exchange for Worship, live only and ever for the Father's Love...so they Dream: Jude and Sharon Dream the final Warrior Dream.

"You see me as only Cock."

"What are women good for but to be useful?"

"To get you off— _that's it?_ "

"What else, bitch?"

Pierce— _not just in etheral words but in full presence!_ —is at Jude's side, lying down next to him on the other side of the bed. Pierce whom Sharon had not seen slink into the room but whom she should have seen, so she says to herself upon sensing his presence: _Pierce!...You motherfucker!_

"Jude, my boy, my brother, my lover...be strong in this Dream, do not be seduced by her for she is the Betrayer. She only wants to suck you down into death, into obliteration, to create children who will rise up to slay you!

Women _are_ only useful. Do not be ashamed of that Truth, of this Revelation. Our Father has been merciful, he has let them live...he has bestowed upon them the tiny cock and offered them the many pleasures of the fuller cock. Do not be beguiled by this Temptress."

_Dreaming the pleasures of the fuller cock_ : He had often brought her to deep pleasure by massaging her clitoris. At first, he had done this somewhat mechanically. As an ardent lover-to-be, his young mind had consumed every book on the sexual arts which he could find. In the beginning, he enjoyed—like drinking that first cold beer!—enjoyed touching her here and there and making her spark electric. Sweet kisses. Nip of the ears. A lick upon her nape. Gentle hands upon her breasts. Lolling suck of her nipples. Then, the frolicking in her wetlands, that part of her which was drooling to have him...faintly touched and unleashed are floods of frothing passion, her body rifling with lust and panting desire, she grips him hard, rolls towards him but then is jerked away from him by ungodly hellish passions of darkest fears...it is a spiritual reflex, one he does not let escape on fleshy terrain so he parts her Passage and slips in fingers like small sailboats launched upon a lake...which flap and heave and are dragooned around by terrifying thunderbolt winds...so does he pleasure her, arriving at her clitoris—her own small male, an image at which his inner mind always sniggers and laughs, like matching up against a really short guy in basketball!— _but_ as he takes her on so does she swell and loom large...blasts upward as if her clit were just the tip of some submerged gigantic penis, for hers is a craziness to match his own when masturbating, he strokes her and the top of her head cracks open and a pillar of fire flares up, splattering the sky of their love with a fireworks of joy and happiness and excitement...yet, it was also always here that he struck the most stolid fear of her, for she seemed unquenchable, never to be satisfied, endlessly strokable...here that something within him knew that he had tread beyond Love and entered into the treacherous realm of Worship—into a fabled land where goddesses reside... _but he mere mortal, he mere Odysseus!_

...faithful, he gave all to her, but also found clever ways to escape from her, to bestow his respects and shout his admirations, then slip away from her Fragrant Isle...down into her, simulating with his fingers the thrust and parry of his cock, turning her southern mouth into cock-hungry and if he did not mount her and have his way, then he'd kneel upright, abruptly terminate her wilding pleasure and wag his cock in front of her mouth, holding it and stroking it, kneeling there with concrete immovability, not allowing her to miss his intent or avoid his command, for it was a command—and if he had to take her by force, _By God!_ he'd take her by force!...so all was shifted to his cock, to his maleness, to the potency within him, she now knowing that her pleasure would only come after his, that he would return to her again but only after the Main Event...after thrusting and parrying deep into her mouth: north and south... _Amen_.

_Rise up with him from within Black Water._ "Yes! We will!" a shout equally not heard by another.

"Jude, Jude...I know you don't fully believe. I feel, I sense, I was present to you as you began to bleed. Not bleed from your penis, not bleed like Adam did when the Father God cut a false cunt in his side, cut and circumcised his penis, drawing drops of blood and with that blood mystifying Adam, fooling Adam, duping Adam with Eve...they who awakened to live the Dream wherein only the cock is worshipped—God The Father Cock Almighty as through his son...profane totem ringing testicular bells.

I know you don't _fully_ believe."

As Fate is served, Sharon begins to Dream with her Beloved.

But there is no text to direct her, no whisper from cosmic corners, no communication from another sphere.

She slips off the bed, stands and steps to the other side of the bed— _Pierce, be gone!_ —reaching over so as not to drop his hand, not to lose contact...nudges the machines out of the way. She carefully drapes the various tubes— _Spider threads!—_ over the bed's head-board...moves this and that so that she can lie down next to him, be as physically close as the barrier of skin will allow.

She attends to his breathing: they Breathe.

She attends to his smell: mingling to become Perfume of Desire.

She attends to his sight: plucking out her Third Eye so that he may see with it and that she may share his blindness.

She attends to the architecture of his body—aligning hers to be intimate with his, visualizing knees to knees, stomach to stomach, breasts to breasts, arms embraced...merging: Jude and Sharon in wholed singularity—coupled as Beloveds.

"I'm dying, Sweetheart, aren't I?"

"So it appears." _Ah_ , how she wished she could factually lie.

Jude heaves a sundering sigh—the air in the room splits and divides.

"It is all too much! _Too much_!"

Sharon panics. These words are Despair Unending. _What can I do or say?_

_Sharon prays_ : Mother where are _we_? I have come back here as I have a thousand times, a million times as I have tried to be a faithful Daughter of Eve. I have born his children. I have beached ships full of sexual pleasure. I have accepted his Cock and worshipped it with him...but now, now— _No longer! Not again! This Warrior Dreaming must stop._

Sharon knows it is Jude's vowed departure from this Warrior Dreaming of the battling sexes that has slain him. Knew even before he finished talking about it where he was going; what he was going to say.

" _We need to Dream, together! Dream the Beloveds Dream!_ " She had heard Jude say this in her own Dream, even though he was slain and had fallen before he spoke it to her in time and space.

Sharon tightens her grip on his right hand. Holds and presses it tightly, squeezing. "We are to live forever, together!"

Can you hear me? Jude. Jude. Jude!

"Can you hear me?"

"Of course."

"I want to worship you."

"It's not possible."

"Don't believe that!"

"It's not Dreamable."

"Don't ever say that!"

"I don't know how to give Birth. I can only Slay."

"Stop Dreaming _that!_ "

Dream _this_ : Jude and Sharon are forever. There was no Beginning. No Garden. No God-Alone. No Adam without Eve. This myth does exist. It is alive. It is being dreamed.

_But it doesn't have to be so_.

Yet males have been so blinded. Adam so blinded to Eve that he believes she came from him!

But— _idiot savant?_ —even he knows he has no womb. No cunt.

So, what is it that must no longer be Dreamed?

Jude, _I know:_ The Warrior who simulates in battle the birth. Who in battle spills blood—makes the male body bleed, like you in menses! Who in battle, supposedly, kills so that he who is slain is born, again, on The Other Side..Jesus dying rises... _Our Father Who Art In Heaven._

Sharon strokes Jude's penis. It engorges into a fullness.

"You know I have a cock, am Great Father. Let me now unveil _your_ cunt, oh, Great Mother!"

She touches his forehead. Taps and waltzes her fingertips till one alights upon Jude's Third Eye. Thrumming. Sweetly whispers words of endearment... _Awake!_...he opens.

"Magical eye. Eye of Imagination. This is our Beloveds power—to imagine, to dream, to create endless realities. Realities which we share together in embrace: physical embrace, soulful embrace, astral embrace!"

Jude is astounded and bewildered by this queer, oddly fuller sense of himself.

"Imagine yourself as Great Mother."

Gasping, _I am Great Mother!_

Awake!

Jude and Sharon, "Forever henceforth _we_ Dream the Dream of the Beloveds."

(More...)

Awake.

When she first sees him, she knows that it is just as when she last first saw him. For there has been so much time between them that time is new. This, then, a First Meeting of the Beloveds.

She feels him Breathe; breathing her, inhale, breathing him, exhale.

"Wake up, wake up, Jude, my Beloved!"

Sharon Seymour worships Jude Schutt.

No longer holding him only as a useful instrument—as seeding Cock.

No longer restricting him to the spheres of Time and Space.

No longer denying him her Eternal Soul and them Eternal Life.

No longer denying The Embrace of the Beloveds.

_Awake, my Great Mother!_ My Beloved, Jude.

Jude wakens...they are standing upon a mountain peak at twilight's embrace of sun departing and moon rising...he turns towards her, bows and begins to celebrate her...words lifted by his heart's song he proclaims to all the living on Earth and in the Heavens...his praise is a worshipping of Her in Sharon:

"Who is my Beloved? Sharon is my Beloved. I celebrate you my precious Beloved, Sweetest Sharon. I celebrate Her in you. Hear me, my brothers and sisters, hear me all creatures above and below, hear me as I honor my Beloved.

_The sheer delicacy of her undoes me!_ I who am bone and muscle, the conqueror, the smithy at the forge, manipulating the life we share, find myself but a whimper in her ear, a melting of heart on her lips. She comes to me and her mere presence, sighted from afar, buckles my knees and my mind is no longer mine, my heart so much bigger than I could ever imagine. For there is a healing that she is, a closing up of open-ended parts of me, a suturing together of flesh rendered asunder by blows and battles. In her presence I am humbled, dissembled, dashed into shallow pools of water. Yet so majestic am I when we embrace, as I am so full of her and me that I expand cosmically and sense myself as eternal, never dying, _a precious coupled presence_ so fierce and formidable which we have unleashed with simple, even mundane words, words of enticement, of incantation, of seduction, of ecstasy—'Come to me, my precious beloved!'

Hear me, all my brothers and sisters, hear me and join with me...celebrate your Beloved!"

No longer living The Lie of Lovers—living in Truth, the Beloveds Breathe and Dream.

(More...)

The doctor was amazed at Jude's astounding over-night recovery.

"Honestly," he says, "we don't know what happened to you."

(" _Dreaming is not part of his healing imagination."_ )

Jude smiles, warmly giving the man his due, thanks the nurse, ready to exit this reality he no longer needs.

At day's end, Sharon picks him up; wheelchair at the curb.

They go home.

Sharon has just finished cooking supper. His appetite is ravenous, but he is still physically weakened by the ordeal.

"There's no worship in your gobbling down this meal!" she teases.

Fork halted on the way to his mouth, a small gulp..."Err, sorry. My body seems to want to catch up with...with _whatever_ happened."

She thinly smiles; simply happy for the return of such pedestrian foolishness.

He imagines the fork as a shovel, heaving coal into the freighter's fiery oven.

They are early to bed this evening.

Quietly they read; maybe half-an-hour.

"Honey," her word stops him; he had just begun to doze. "Honey, do we understand what happened?"

"Huh?...Sure do."

Annoyingly smug, so Sharon thinks. She notices his pillow punching moves—can interpret all his small habits!

"Jude." Firm. A tonal slap. Large rock heaved into small pond.

He stops again; halts—pushes the pillow back up so that he can sit back up.

"Sharon?"

"I want to know if _we_ understand what happened." The "we" was two syllables long.

Jude releases a tired sigh. It causes Sharon a split-second of remorse. She scolds herself for pressing him...but then shakes it off.

"I know," a second-wind, Jude feels a surge of power as he speaks, "I know what I think we know....I died and was born again."

"And...?"

"And?" Jude holds the question with two hands raised in front of him, playfully rocks back and forth as if the question is trying to escape his grasp.

"And...we are going to be Old together. We are going to Age together. Because we _are_ the Ancient Ones. Right now." He smiles; pleased with what he has been able to articulate, at last.

Sharon stirs. His answer is not totally satisfactory.

Jude is not aware of her unease.

"Do you understand that _we_ are pregnant?"

The wildness of the image forces a stuttering guffaw and a sarcastic remark, "Should I call you Sarah?"

She catches him—mentally turns him around and over and kicks him in the astral butt! "Right, sure, you're Abraham. _Of course_."

Silence grasps their tongues...silliness fades...deep thoughts are shared without words: they slip into each other's arms, embrace....enter the Beloveds Dream.

The Beloveds Dream...embracing as they open to worship. Full worship of his cock. Full worship of her cunt. Mouths hungering to kiss. Like thickly fogged clouds close to the earth, so they lay entwined...the Beloveds open to Dreaming...she embraces him and he embraces her—two flames in fiery consummation as One.

...his flesh now flows with her astral blood, his heart beats now with her astral beat—it is for Jude to become cunt: Potent Cunt: with the blood of the Great Mother flowing through his veins.

... her flesh now flows with his astral blood, her heart beats now with his astral beat—it is for Sharon to become cock: Potent Cock: with the blood of the Great Father flowing through her veins.

_Coupled_ : Sharon as Jude: Jude as Sharon...are One, are god and goddess, Mother and Father of All the Living.

The pulsation of their embrace is the entwining two-hearts, two-minds, two-souls that flare up as One as do candle flames when they merge, then part to become two, again—he and she, He and She

...swallowing and being swallowed, penetrating and being penetrated, surrendering and being surrendered unto

...no longer Forgetting The Male within Her nor The Female within Him—Jude-Sharon-Sharon-Jude, the endless flow of Eternal Life, of Eros Eternally Afire

And what shall we awaken to when we no longer die?

We shall wake unto an unimaginable Presence.

We shall wake unto an unimaginable Memory.

We shall wake unto an unimaginable Devotion.

We shall awake unto an unimaginable Dreaming.

We shall worship, eternally as Embraced.

We shall be forever Beloveds, Dreaming.

( _"Nihil Obstat!"_ )

THE END
