Luis Javier Rodriguez

The following statement was written on the occasion of my oldest son Ramiro's birthday today, June 17, 2014. He turns 39. I drew on cosmological studies and my own interpretations of highly developed and complicated indigenous ideas, mostly Mexika (so-called Aztec) and Mayan. Ramiro is now a practitioner of Mexika Danza and Native American spirituality. I offer this not as a doctrine encased in stone, but to move ideas, the imagination -- a way to see that can help bring more clarity about nature's core laws and principles. The operating ratio of the earth: 13:20 is the base-operating ratio of the earth. There are actually 13 moons in a solar year, 13 strands in DNA, 13 levels of sky in so-called Meso-American cosmology, 20 months of the calendar, 20 fingers and toes… and on and on. This ratio helps attune human life to the timeship called earth. The ratio is also expressed as 13:260 (the 260 days of the Mexika Tonalpohualli calendar, which is also true for the key calendar of the Mayan, the Tzolkin). There are also 260 days in the gestation period of a human being in the womb, which comes to 13 months (not 9), 20 days per month. There are even more complicated mathematical links since math is the language of the universe. 260,000 years is also the end of the five 5,200-year cycles that marked the 2012 harmonic convergence. 52 years is also a life cycle in humans and in the Mexika cosmology, where every material possession would be discarded and a new fire would begin the next 52-year cycle for a city or tribe. However, since the European invasion in 1492 (during the period of Christian consolidation of Spain and the Spanish Inquisition to ethnically-cleanse Spain of Moors and Jews) brought imbalance as well as humanly, earthly and spiritual poison to this land, the operating ratio has been 12:60 (12 months make a year, two 12-hour periods makes a day-and-night, 12 is a dozen, 60 minutes to an hour, etc.). Since then we’ve been out of tune, unaligned, in what is called the “Dark Dreamspell of History.” This is also why there are 520 years from 1492 invasion to 2012. Conquest, colonization, diseases, wholesale theft of land and minerals, the rise and pinnacle of capitalism, and more mark this period. While tremendous growth in social structures, technology and instruments occurred during this time, we also saw the greatest destruction of people ever –- and the greatest destruction of land and resources, leading to global warming and beyond. Almost all 12:60 systems of human structure, labor, production or wealth have been built on, and are a breeding ground, for inequality and imbalance. This has also produced a “memory” virus. The purpose of the 12:60 ratio was to erase all memory of the proper earth ratio as well as the complementary relationship of feminine and masculine. In other words, to disconnect our minds and our hearts from the indigenous DNA. Along with the 12:60 ratio came the imposition of patriarchy from Europe/Mideast, where the Fatherland (the country, the patrias, where the word “patriot” comes from) became more important than the Motherland (the whole planet). Still the genetic memory is with us, in our bones if not in our conscious. Tapping into this is the healing power to be balanced in this world despite the pervasive fracturing, imbalances and injustices of so-called civilization. 13:20 is the ratio of the proper relationship of feminine and masculine, needed for all birth and regeneration. This is what Ometeotl means (“Two Energy”). The Creator spirit. The Supreme Regenerating Principle of the Universe. 13 is feminine, 20 is masculine. Therefore, Ometeotl is not a God to be worshipped, detached, personified, but a principle of all life to be respected, affirmed, honored, and lived by. Knowing these laws/principles/ratios is turning necessity into mind. As Marxists say, freedom is the appreciation of necessity. You can only do what you want to do when you know what needs to be done. The human experience as matter What is called matter, the material conditions of our lives, comes from the word “mother.” Mother earth is our universal birthplace, recreated in a woman’s body, where spiritual beings become matter. As they say, we are spiritual beings on a human journey—not just human beings on a spiritual quest. It’s actually both—feminine and masculine. This means not pitting one against the other. That leads to misalignment. But matter has finite qualities, laws of birth and development, limitations as well as dangers. Our journey then has a purpose—to learn the mastery of consequences. In matter, we learn how to breath, walk, think, act, do, impact, etc. We can go negative or positive—both are possible. We can eat healthy protein-rich mushrooms… or poisoned ones (and some of the most beautiful and appealing mushrooms can be the most poisonous). We learn the consequences of our actions and inactions. We learn about the lures of the attractive and intoxicating (and their limitations) while also learning about the long-range, the qualitative, the slower gathering of depth knowledge. You don’t have to pose one against the other. They all matter (“mother” again). Our bodies matter, although they are finite, needing care and healthy options. But there is a part of us that is infinite, eternal, abundant. There is a way to tap into the abundant aspects of our natures. These are imagination and creativity, inexhaustible wells. The feminine energies account for these. The masculine energies account for our prudent, practical, step-by-measured-step plans, proposals and actions. Both are important, but again we often pit one against the other. External nature is also both finite and generative, the latter becoming engaged when we work within the laws/principles of what allows natural things get born, grow, die, and get born again. There is abundance in nature as well — she teaches us this everyday. Nature is our best and greatest university. Our mother (matter) is therefore the greatest source of the masculine, yet also the place where the feminine acts out its power to go beyond the limits. What I call attunement –- tuning into nature’s energies, powers, and to your own nature and of your relationships –- is re-aligning to the 13:20 operating ratio and to the proper relationships (harmony) of feminine and masculine. In life, like a good guitar, we have to get out of tune, imbalanced, off kilter. But with consciousness, learning, ritual, ceremony, and art, we can get tuned again, on a higher level each time. It’s aligning or tuning the six “strings” of our being — the spiritual, mental, emotional, psychological, creative, and physical. In human/earth development, we have been out of tune for 520 years — we are in the beginning process of re-aligning, or we cease to evolve, which means we cease to exist. The point is evolution, unlike the narrow religious “believers” who claim otherwise (“believing” is not knowing), is “God’s” way, the way of nature, taking the form and content of evolution/revolution through new stages of growth. The spiracle process of all growth (called by modern scientists terms like “punctuated equilibrium,” “the negation of the negation,” the “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” movement, etc.) is how indigenous people saw development. Not just linear, not just cyclical, but the combination of both (masculine and feminine) to create spirals. Again the DNA strand is a spiral, so is the Milky Way, vortexes, the development of new species. Another way to look at this: Every day of our life is the same, a cycle development from the previous day, with variations of sun, moon, stars, elements, seasons, but pretty much what we should expect. But every new day is also something that has never happened before: nobody has ever walked on this particular space of earth, under this specific configuration of sun, moon or stars, etc. before. Just like all humans go through a similar process of conception, gestation, and birth, growth, death, each human being born is also unique, specifically bound with particular combinations of fate and destiny, nature and nurture, environmental and internal factors, purpose and meaning. Yes, other beings have populated the planet. Yes, we’ve been “here” before. But at the same time there has never been a person like you in this time, in this place, under these conditions. You are connected and at the same time singular, including with unique soul (attributes, propensities, destinies) and physical properties and imprints (fingerprints, voice patterns, face, etc.). Birthdays and 13-year cycles There are four cycles of 13 years before a person becomes 52. For the Mexika, each cycle is a time of re-calibration, a threshold time, when doors open, new possibilities emerge, and growth is qualitatively changed. Remember, 52 years is the big transformative time before the final cycle, when you prepare to enter the other side. So, my son, on your 39th birthday: You are ending the third cycle, entering the fourth. This is a time of destiny-making, mature decisions, of fruitful endeavors, of achievement. The 3rd cycle is mostly a learning cycle, beginning after your brain became fully shaped and molded around age 26 (the end of second cycle). Pray for guidance, protection, but also inner strength. Don’t get off your path, but when you do just get back on. No more dramas. No more deep turmoil. Now a part of your soul settles in. Another part is ready to be seen, accomplished, in your destiny. It’s time to get tuned up again. c/s

Dear Friend, supporter, family: When I decided to run for California governor around a year ago, my wife Trini said, “you have to take this serious.” She meant this could not be a symbolic campaign or one that only raises issues. I had to provide real solutions and I had to run to win. However, I have good reason—like millions of Californians—to be wary of U.S. elections as a wholly undemocratic process, dominated by two parties that are two sides of the same coin, and where corporations control the big funds as well as who gets heard and who wins. Today millions of potential voters don’t register and millions who are registered don’t vote. I can hardly blame them. Therefore, if I ran I’d have to unveil the undemocratic nature of elections in a complicated crisis-ridden capitalist world while at the same time fight to make voting meaningful again. I knew I couldn’t do this by being a better candidate, but a different candidate. I wouldn’t take corporate donations and I wouldn’t make any deals. I refused to garner funds just to feed a growing “elections” industry that makes it near impossible for less heeled candidates to participate. While voters needed more voices and real choices, California made this difficult by having nonpartisan primary elections where only the top two vote getters, regardless of party or no party affiliation, would get to run for the general November elections. I also had to address the key issues affecting Californians—the increasingly poisoned and unstable environment, including a multi-year drought; economic distress, home foreclosures, growing joblessness; and concerns like the failing and bloated prison system that has more to do with poverty and race than crime (and growing beatings and murders by police of poor residents). My campaign had to be the intersection of the three pillars of a healthy society—a clean and green environment, a thriving economy and social justice for all. I also called the campaign “Imagine a New California.” In a time of “austerity” measures that made more people poorer and a much smaller number richer, we had to imagine the kind of state we needed and deserved, not the one being thrust on us by Governor Brown and the Democratic Party—and their cronies in the Republican Party. Against all odds, we were able to get around 200 volunteers statewide, to obtain 5,000 signatures and/or funds to be on the ballot as well as the endorsements of the Green Party of California, the U.S. Justice Party, the Mexican American Political Association, Corazon Del Pueblo of Boyle Heights, El Hormiquero of Pacoima, PODER of Santa Barbara, Chicanos Unidos of Orange County, Brooklyn & Boyle magazine, Chicano scholar Rudy Acuna, former Green Party vice-presidential candidate Rose Clemente, former California lawyer and whistle blower Kathleen Carroll, African American poet Jeffery Martin, and Vagabond Books editor Mark Lipman, among others. We traveled eleven times up and down the state—standing with the elderly being evicted in San Francisco; family and friends of 13-year-old Andy Lopez, killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Rosa; anti-fracking demonstrators in Fresno; a Martin Luther King Day march against poverty in Sacramento; with college student Aloni Bonilla, beaten while handcuffed by a California Highway Patrol officer; protestors against Exide battery recycling plant that was poisoning some 115,000 residents of L.A.’s eastside; students being pushed out of their school in Watts; anti-Monsanto demonstrators on the steps of the state’s capitol; reading poetry during an Open Mic held in a garage in scandal-ridden Bell due to lack of arts and cultural resources; with around 100 day laborers in the Napa Valley; some 7,000 marchers on Cesar Chavez day in San Fernando; close to 3,000 people in Salinas protesting the murders of three farmworkers in 90 days by police… and on and on. Despite a major media blackout, articles and interviews on me appeared in the Huffington Post, Fox News Latino, Los Angeles Times, Truthout, Mint Press News, Orange County Weekly, Monterey County Weekly, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Truthdig, KPFK, Radio Bilinque, Monterey Herald, Daily Californian, Univision, La Opinion, and more. And then on June 3, the day of elections, I was able to get 53,220 votes. With one of the lowest voter turnouts, without one corporate dollar and no big media attention, I was 6th of 15 candidates and first among the seven third-party and “no party preference” candidates. Statewide, our campaign beat Governor Brown's only Democratic challenger and two of Brown's Republican challengers. We didn’t win but we did win—we’ve now laid a foundation for a new movement in California around the issues that matter. We plan to continue the “Imagine a New California” campaign through November with a website, conferences, social media, blogs, podcasts, editorials, talks, and more. We plan to create a network and schools for revolutionary change, to engender new leaders and possible future candidates with new vision, skills and organized hope. I owe this all to you—my friends, volunteers, and supporters. I owe this to my family and the thousands who voted for me. Please join with me as we move forward for a new, integral and just California that aligns resources to human needs, that works for everyone—and not just the powerful and wealthy. Imagine a new California—then let’s work together to make this happen. Respect and justice, Luis J. Rodriguez c/s

We are two weeks away from the June 3 California primary elections. The Green Party of California has endorsed candidates for Secretary of State (David Curtis), Treasurer (Ellen Brown), Controller (Laura Wells), and Lt. Governor (Jen Goodman). As many of you know, I am the officially endorsed Green Party candidate for governor. There are also many local Green Party candidates on the ballot. Please vote Green. Here is a link to a crowd-funding campaign where you can donate to the Rodriguez for Governor campaign (please also spread the word): https://fundly.com/imagine-a-new-california-fundraiser We aim to be the second-highest vote getter after Governor Brown. Presently Assemblyman Tim Donnelly is the second-highest vote getter in the polls. Donnelly is a Tea Party member, a Minuteman and known racist. We can't let him set the parameters of the debates with Brown through the November elections. I am the most qualified and passionate candidate to challenge Governor Brown and the status quo on the issues that matter. To find out more go to: www.rodriguezforgovernor.org.

On April 3, 2014, I was privileged to give the keynote speech at the 10th Annual J. Paul Taylor Social Justice Symposium at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. This year's theme was "Justice for Native Americans: Historical Trauma, Contemporary Images, and Human Rights." Below is my talk and the poem I read at the end. I want to start by providing a number of greetings in the language of a few native peoples: Yaa'teeh – “It is good” in Dine/Navajo Kwira Va – “We are one” in Raramuri Gualli Tonalli – “Good day,” in Nahuatl but can be translated as “have a good destiny” And In lak’ech – Mayan from southern Mexico and Guatemala: “I am the other you” What links these greetings is the sense of connection, that we are all related, “Mitakuye Oyasin” in Lakota, a sense that is largely being eroded in our modern industrial and post-industrial world. I’d like to propose that this disconnection, separation from nature, from our own natures, and each other, is the greatest source of inhumanity, trauma, and disintegration of our natural rights confronting Native peoples today—and I’ll venture to say for everyone else as well. Separation is what “sin” in the Christian faith is aimed at accomplishing, separating believers from their God. As Native Peoples we saw the invasion, infusion and infection from European powers more than 500 years ago as the single most important root of our separation from what we consider the Great Spirit, Creator, Ometeotl—including the very earth and sky and systems that have sustained us for tens of thousand of years, or as we would say, “forever.” As most of you know, I’ve been around the world addressing this deep separation in a variety of ways. Because of my work, for example, I’ve visited hundreds of prisons and juvenile lockups. I’ve done this for close to 35 years. I’ve been to California institutions like Folsom, Soledad, San Quentin, and Chino; to juvenile facilities and prisons in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. I’ve done the same in some of the harrowing prisons of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Argentina, and southern England. You have not been to a living hell until you’ve walked down several caverns of a Salvadoran prison with no electricity, no running water, tattooed faced gang youth at every turn, 40 to 50 prisoners in a cell meant for two, including a section for women with babies, who are also incarcerated. Today I was at the J. Paul Taylor Center juvenile facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, speaking to adjudicated young men. I can appreciate the difference in how the United States deals with our troubled youth, the much greater resources available, and for the most part staffed by courageous and caring men and women. I had a great time with these youth, great talks, and like always, I learned so much in hearing from them. Yet, I must say, the separation affecting these youth is palpable, punishing and in my view destructive to their spirits and to our communities. What traumatized, violent, raging young men need—and this is based on actual practice, study and experience—is more community, more family (and if they don’t have a family, or have a broken one, a healthy sense of family). The wisest way to address their issues—as deep as they may be—is more connection. Generally, in our so-called adult corrections and juvenile justice systems, in dealing with most trouble, most traumas, we do the exact opposite. Even the psychoactive drugs we prescribe to ADD children, or mentally ill persons, or the clinically depressed result in artificial separation from one’s own powers and energies to cope and to change. Why is this so? Because this is what we’ve done to ourselves. The poison of spirit I’m talking about has penetrated almost all our policies, laws and history—it has separated us by so-called races, by economic class, young from old, men from women, gay from straight, powerful from the powerless. We are a divided country, in a “disunited states” of America, one that is constantly at odds. I’m proposing another way to re-integrate ourselves, a way to become more integral as a people, to make sure all basic needs and rights as human beings are intact, and a way that will allow us to unite around the essentials, have liberty around the nonessentials, and to be caring, connected and cooperative in everything else. We as Native Peoples have an obligation to provide such knowledge, wisdom and imaginations to the world. As a Chicano, my own native roots come from this very Chihuahua desert, before it was divided into two countries and various states, before there were any borders. A time when we all spoke a variance of what scholars call the Ute-Aztecan language group, that encompasses tribes on both sides of the border such as the Raramuri, Yaqui, Huichol, but also Hopi, Shoshone, Paiute, and Tohono O’odham. My mother was born in Chihuahua City from a Raramuri woman and a mixed Mexican man. Her grandmother and mother left the Copper Canyon—La Barranca de Cobre—section of the Sierra Tarahumara during the Mexican Revolution, walking for miles during a time when whole villages, and what some people didn’t know, small tribes were being destroyed by federal troops. My father is from a part of the southern Mexican state of Guerrero with many Nahuatl-speaking peoples but also former African slaves. When my dad’s village of birth was destroyed, his mother carried him as a baby in swaddling on the back of a burro just before federales attacked. I have Native roots from both areas, some African, and, of course Spanish. There’s a blue-eyed grandfather in my lineage. However, for the past twenty years I’ve cleaved closer to my native roots when I decided to sober up after having been on drugs for seven years as a youth, including heroin, and then drinking for twenty years on top of that. I gravitated to the Mexika traditions that are now in almost every major Chicano community in the United States, first in Chicago where I lived at the time. I also had teachers among the Lakota, from Pine Ridge, where I helped bring contingents of Chicano, Puerto Rican, and African American gang members. I’ve done ceremonies there, as well as in and around Illinois and the Midwest. In 1997, I began to go to the Navajo Nation for ceremonies and teachings, as well as work with youth and families there. I learned the medicine way from a roadman, Anthony Lee, and his wife Delores of Lukachukai, Arizona, who soon adopted my wife Trini, who has Huichol roots from Jalisco, Mexico. We’ve gone back there almost every year. My other teachers include Macuiltochtli and Tlacaelel of Mexico; Julio Revolorio of Guatemala; La Dona and Panduro, Quechua traditional practitioners from the rainforest of Peru; Ed Young Man Afraid of His Horse from Pine Ridge; and Huitzi and Meztli, a Nahuatl-speaking couple who currently run our Mexikayotl and Nahuatl classes at Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural—the cultural space and bookstore that Trini and I helped create thirteen years ago in the Northeast San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles. Trini and I were also among the founders of the Pacoima and San Fernando sweat lodges—and Trini now runs the Hummingbird Women’s Lodge of Sylmar, CA. While most people know me as a poet and writer, with 15 books in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including a best-selling memoir, this aspect of my life informs what I’ve done for the past twenty years, including my current run as the officially endorsed Green Party candidate for governor of California. Here is what I say we need today and in the future, drawing from these varied but linked traditions and teachings, which I believe are more relevant than ever before—these are not to be written off as “archaic” and “quaint” traditions that no longer apply. --Coherency: We must help our youth, families and communities understand their roots, rituals and practices, that they were valid then and valid now. The destruction of our elder systems due to conquests, colonization, industry and un-education, as I call it, is detrimental to our spiritual and physical growth. These traditions, as has been done for all time, also need to be renewed, re-imagined and re-invigorated. Young people must feel they can shape and reshape our ties and connections. Rituals and practices have the key element of bringing people together. The root meaning of religion is said to be “to bind, to connect.” It’s personal and social. --Cooperation: As a country for more than 235 years, we’ve lived in a capitalist system where competition, maximizing profits, and politics as war by other means have ruled most of what we do or don’t do. We “cooperate” in a shallow sense—to keep the system going, with our complicity, our compliance, and often our ignorance. We are governed by the assumptions of scarcity and mantras such as “killed or be killed.” We need to align instead to the highest level of evolutionary development—cooperate to sustain and maintain our species. Competition has its place. But the constant should be cooperation for the wellbeing of everyone—that the healthy and whole development of each is dependent on the healthy and whole development of all. How do we continue to allow a situation where the biggest part of our national budget is for war? Where poverty and joblessness are ingrained, purposely kept active, and justified by blaming the victims of what are largely economic and political decisions? In a cooperative, connected system the overriding aspect would be abundance, the way nature and our own particular natures work. In proper relation to nature, following its own laws of regeneration and development, we can feed, house and clothe every human being on earth. That’s God’s way, the Creator’s imprint, Ometeotl. Scarcity, like borders, like mortgages, like the wage system, are man-made—invented illusions, a matrix, as many have said before, made to feel like they were derived from God or nature itself. We’ve fallen into the traps of these illusions—and nothing dramatizes this more than our incarcerated youth, too often for hurting, stealing or killing. We’ve created this world, and then punish these youth for carrying out what we’ve set up to its disastrous and maddening conclusions. I hate that young people kill each other for little or nothing. But don’t we do this as a nation, sacrificing our warrior sons and daughters, and people from other lands, for political and economic goals that have nothing to do with our whole or healthy development? We go to war and we continue to have poverty, drugs, terror, and deep disconnections? We sacrifice so much for little or no lasting results. Our world is still topsy turvy, still unequal, still dangerous. --Consciousness: It’s time for all of us to think, to use our highly developed brains, what is often referred to as the highest form of matter on earth, to create new ways of doing things, new ways of sustenance, new means to continue as a species beyond the scarcity, the violence, the income inequalities, and growing hopelessness. Our brains are the greatest tool and weapon we have, totally derived from God and nature, and yet most of our thinking is limited, kept in the dark, confused, filled with so much information and facts, but little discernment and wisdom. Can we imagine a collective awareness, the full powers of each of our brains times the number of people on this earth? We could solve anything. Every problem has its solutions right next to it. That’s nature’s way. It’s our short-term, shallow and fear-driven concepts that keep us away from this knowledge, often addicted, lost and broken in the dark. Revolution in our economy, our politics, our technology—which is already gone beyond the constraints of politics and economy—must first occur in our minds. Our consciousness. The spirit of teaching must now be linked to the natural spirit of learning in all peoples, what the Mexikas called Nemachtilli. And I want to leave you with the last “c” in this list, one that is rapidly becoming in short supply: Caring. Nothing works better than caring. When I was a troubled youth, in schools that had no place for me, I remember the few caring teachers, and the ones who were mean and ugly. But I don’t remember the majority of adults in my life because they were mostly indifferent. Caring to me is the opposite of indifference. It means giving a “hoot.” I’d use a stronger word, but that would be inappropriate for this audience. I’ve found that when it comes to crime, dysfunction and prisons, people respond by not caring. A few get “tough” on crime, mostly from in front of their TV sets as they bombarded with images and stories of the worse of our humanity, fiction or documentary. But I have said this for forty years, and I’ll say this for the next forty years, it’s tougher to care. This is why I support restorative justice practices, which have roots in Native systems. This is how we draw on the very geniuses and gifts that people bring, to re-connect, to bring together offender and victim, hurt and healing, the wrong with the right. In all things there must be a clear path to restore, repair and help make whole what was taken away or broken. Instead of punishment, young people need treatment, tools, teachings. Recently, I took part in a poetry event held at the largest juvenile lock up in North America, the Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar CA, just five minutes from my home. Several youth read poetry. One of them was 14 years old, a baby-faced young man who did a beautiful poem, with his mother and grandmother in the audience. Later I found out, this youth was facing 135 years in prison. Anyway, you look at it, this is wrong: We throw away our young people we throw away our future. I’ve learned from my native elders that we are now into a new age, often expressed as a new spiral from five previous spirals, that must take into account the four points I just expressed. My Dine teacher says it’s time to realign with our earth and sky systems, governed by the female and male energies in all things, and that this does not have to be against anybody or anything—except the clearly detrimental and destructive aspects I’ve mentioned so far, among others. We are not against so-called white people or Christianity or some of the important values brought here from Europe, Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world. But in honor and respect to our ancestors, to this land, to our truths, we need to bring forth what we know, the bone knowledge that’s in our DNA, tapping into the richness of thought and practices of our peoples, into this modern dilemma, to address these modern traumas and empties, to become meaningful, relevant and vital for our time. To end I’d like to read a poem about leadership, a new kind of leadership, the leadership that everyone must now have for us to continue fully into the future. I thank you for listening, and I pray this short discursive opens up a deeper dialogue, with questions, comments and more questions. When a leader appears… When a leader appears the earth springs into song Flowered with new hope, A bright beginning even from a terribly seeded past Where dust and stones are a bare sowing ground. Wise ones have long declared: “Leaders are people who see farther and feel deeper.” Such leaders know there’s a design to our lives. Braided with threads of the future We don’t just make history, We are called to it – just as the fleeting or slanted Become solid and direct. Aspiring to be a leader, you become a leader, Turning what’s possible into what’s next. Not just creating a nest for oneself Made of familiars who agree or keep one comfortable, Not just basking in the spotlight or the imagined power. But by cultivating character, courage, discipline, And humbleness— Leaders carry this sacrifice with grace. Always remember the unrecoverable moments, With loved ones—with family— While also giving to the whole Even at the expense of one’s time, One’s considerations. All proper sacrifices are rooted in the sacred. Blessed and cursed, Loved and hated, Seen well or lied about, No leader can escape the human energies That both destroy and lift up. Yet true leaders are matched for this challenge. There is a leader-seed planted Before birth and carefully nurtured By angels By elements By the alignments of universal sway. You feel this in the bones – somewhere the message is: “I was meant to be here.” The fact is leadership is in everyone: They emerge from the human sea. Yet, as deeper truths go, Leaders see farther and feel deeper: Just like the rest of us, only more, Turning time into learning, into passion, into revelation. They bargain with God for how to be in the world: Learning for learning, Passion for passion —revelation for revelation. c/s