Friends

Everyone is your friend until proven otherwise.

The proof is through what they do and what they don’t do.

Who is not my friend?

The person who doesn’t want justice for me.

The person who can’t hear me when I cry.

The person who doesn’t understand peace.

The person who is entitled.

The person who lets me starve.

The person who is okay if I live in fear.

The person who hits me.

The person who doesn’t care if I live.

The person who doesn’t see me because of my color, my gender, my ethnicity, my race, or my personal belief.

Who is my friend?

The person who speaks up against injustice.

The person who comforts me in my despair.

The person who doesn’t make Drama in my life.

The person who lets me go through a door first.

The person who shares their lunch with me.

The person who checks in with me to see if I’m okay.

The person who hugs me without asking.

The person whose life would be dimmer without me.

The person who celebrates my life, who I am, who doesn’t need to change me.

To be a friend is both the most tremendous responsibility as well as the simplest.

True friends may not see each other for decades, but when they come together, its as if no time has passed.

This bond, this relationship, is the outward manifestation of an inward purpose.

That purpose is made real through our actions and inactions with each other.

That purpose is the true meaning of love.

True love and true friendship don’t mean no boundaries.

True love and true friendship mean we consider each life, each person an individual worthy of respect, of consideration, of life, of love.

Friendship ends when respect for boundaries is crossed.

Yet friendship is ever-growing and will continually change.

Friendship leaves open the door for redemption even up to the last second of life.

Friendship is symbolized by the open hand.

Is your hand open?

Open to those around you?

To the stranger?

To yourself?

Who are your friends?

Peace

Toby aka Daniel J. Frey

Indifference

Race haters believe they are the majority when they are not.

It is the Indifferent.

The indifferent do not react the world over unless they individually are annoyed.

They will sit on their hands.

They will bind their feet.

They will blind their eyes.

They will tune out the noise.

They will box in their hearts.

They will shuffle their morality.

Not until they are personally devastated will they take action.

Oddly enough, when annoyed, the Indifferent split almost down the middle on which side they will take up.

Just a tick less will become fascists as anti-fascists.

The Jewish genocide proved the power of the indifferent.

A nation, a world, the human race calmly sat by while millions of real people were put to death.

Their response was to do nothing.

Not in my backyard.

Until it was in their backyard, and their sons were killed at Pearl Harbor.

Not until then did we, as Americans, say we better put a stop to hate.

Charles Dickens wrote in a Christmas Carol how Father Christmas was warning Scrooge, the Indifferent, about Humanities' two children.

Want and Ignorance.

Want is the easier of his two children to care for.

Want needs, and once those needs are filled, hunger, shelter, comfort, free from fear; Want won't cause Humanity trouble.

Ignorance, however, will always be the root of evil.

Ignorance, both by accident and especially on purpose, is the cancer in the soul of humanity.

Ignorance will brush aside the milk of human kindness.

Ignorance only sees itself.

That is, until they are personally annoyed as a consequence of its inaction.

To paraphrase MLK, he said he would rather deal with evil because you know where you stand.

Indifference will wait on time.

Putting off doing what's right.

Until time runs out.

I'm also reminded of what that quiet voice keeps asking all of us.

Love reminds us that we all need to do more.

There are no alternatives.

There is no choice.

If you hear the voice of love, it asks us all to do.

To do right.

To do it now.

To do it without hesitation.

To stand, to clap, to raise our voice, and never be silent.

Silence is just as evil as hate.

Peace

Toby aka Daniel J. Frey

Moral Bias

Do as I say, not as I do.

That's moral bias.

When individuals and groups hold another individual or group to a standard that they do not adhere to.

There have been many words created in our language concerning moral bias.

Hypocrite.

Liar.

Flim-flam man.

Carpet Bagger.

Charlatan.

Fraud.

Con artist.

Cheat.

Fake.

Imposter.

Pretender.

Phony.

Bullshitter.

These individuals and groups gain power and influence by feeding fear to the fearful.

Society has been plagued with these people since before there was history.

Sadly, there's no real way to stop them.

There's no law to pass.

There's no protest march.

There's no vote that will matter.

There has only been one way to counteract liars.

The truth.

Only through the light of truth shown into darkness can a reasonable person make a judgment.

Just today, we learned of Speaker Pelosi's husband being assaulted in his home.

A TV personality incredulous wondered why the person who assaulted Paul Pelosi was in jail with attempted murder charges.

Wasn't it simple assault?

This TV person demonstrated clearly moral bias.

If this TV person wanted to be truthful, they would not have conflated you or I being assaulted versus the Speaker of the House's husband being assaulted.

An assault on the Speaker's husband was an indirect assault on our government.

The perpetrator clearly was heard wanting to wait for Nancy to come home.

For what?

A coffee klatch?

The point is the moral bias that we are all assaulted with daily.

Where lying is moral in the pursuit of power.

America has a cancer at the center of its soul.

And we all know what the cancer is called.

Racism.

You ever wonder why racists come down on people because their grass isn't cut?

Why do they drive an old car?

Why are they on welfare?

Why they don't wear their clothes right?

It's because of their moral bias.

Prejudice and bias will warp a lie into the truth.

That's what we're all up against.

Those that profit from telling the lie and those that feed upon the lie.

The lie being there are races of humans.

The truth is there is only one human race.

The only difference you will find between people is not in their DNA.

The only difference between people lies in their capacity to understand love.

Peace

Toby aka Daniel J Frey

Light In The Darkness

The universe is dark.

So is the human consciousness.

We all are born into darkness.

No guidebook is handed out for free to guide us on our stumbling journey.

In the dark, we reach out and touch people with good and not-so-good intentions.

They, too, are on their journey, believing in their guides.

But what is the end?

What is at the end of those maps?

Is it the light of truth or an abyss where there be monsters?

Light in the darkness.

All life springs from the dark.

Without the darkness, we would not be able to recognize the light.

Life in all its form is a resistance to the darkness.

To never have lived means to never have grown.

To never have lived means never leaving the darkness.

To live means leaving the darkness behind where myth, legend, and lies whisper to our ego, telling us there is nothing outside.

Our ignorance of life is a virtue.

Nothing exists outside of what we believe to be true.

However, if you live only in darkness, in your own truth, you are only living a half-life.

A half-life means you are crippled and ignorant of truth.

You are not living a whole life.

A life where light and darkness reveal the truth of the true meaning of life.

Light in the darkness.

There are so few lamp posts of truth in the dark.

So many of the lights put up in the dark are there to trap and hold people like moths to a flame.

People put up these lights because of their need for power, for people to praise them.

They are not true lights.

To judge for yourself what is a true light, always remember this.

Truth doesn’t need you to believe because it is the truth.

Truth doesn’t need your money.

Truth doesn’t need your permission.

Truth stands like a light in the darkness piercing through the fog, sweeping back the ignorance, shining as a beacon of freedom.

The voice of love speaks with the light of truth.

Light in the darkness.

Peace

DFrey

Brotherhood

Equality.

The word the idea of equality strikes fear in many hearts.

Not just racial equality.

No.

But intellectual, cultural, physical, and gender equality also strikes fear.

How could someone be afraid of being equal?

Being equal means I am not unique.

I am not special.

I am not chosen.

I don't get a break.

I'm not first in line.

I am not the best.

Notice how there is a lot of "I" in these thoughts?

"I" as opposed to "us."

Human beings are unique as far as we can tell that they can hold two opposing thoughts in their minds at the same time and believe both of them are true.

I am special; therefore, mankind should serve me.

The rest of humanity was placed on this earth to maintain my position as leader.

No thought given that if you were so unique, so superior, that as it has been said with great power comes great responsibility, your thought should be just the opposite.

If you are so superior, you should be serving mankind, ensuring its happiness, freedom, and justice.

Equality.

Our journey to brotherhood has only begun.

It got some good press, like an announcement in the news back in the 1950s.

Like a voice in the wilderness that echoes between the trees, I am a man pricked up the ears of those asleep.

Far too many fell asleep after those voices of freedom were taken away from the world's consciousness.

Too many thought the fight was over.

It was only the first round of a fight that has no end.

Fear is a terrible thing.

It will make people do terrible things.

Fear will make people deny the truth.

That's why it's such a potent weapon for those who profit from fear.

Realize those who profit from fear it's their only source of income.

They know not of any other trade than fear.

Let us who know better trade fear in on hope.

Let us trade our fear for compassion.

Let us trade our fear for what love demands of us all.

More.

Love wants us to understand there are no boundaries to its reach.

Love is the future.

Fear no more, my sister, my brother.

We are right by your side together, facing the future together.

Drop hate be hope.

Peace

DFrey

Why I'm Not Grateful

Is the ocean grateful that the river runs into it?

Is the sky grateful for another cloud?

Is a lion grateful for the hunt?

Are you grateful to be able to vote?

What does it mean to be grateful?

To be grateful implies something was given to us.

Something that was not expected.

Something that we could not achieve on our own.

Something that goes beyond our expectations.

Is the bird grateful it can fly?

No.

It flies because it can.

It is expected.

It doesn’t owe anyone or anything for its rightful ability to take flight.

It’s what it does.

As humans, we should expect to be fed, have shelter, safety, justice, freedom, love.

These rights of life are not given.

These rights are part of the expectation of life.

Our rights as humans.

To be grateful implies these rights are given to us.

By who?

Show them to us!

This is the argument stated in the Declaration of Independence of why our founding fathers were not “grateful” to the King of England.

Since the foundations of civilization, men have corruptly manipulated the weak.

The most insidious is the evil that men do to the minds of the innocent.

The most hateful is the idea that we should be grateful to them.

Grateful that we are allowed to exist.

That’s the implication that is being driven home.

By whom?

By white racist men in the white racist world, in white racist pulpits, in white racist places of power.

They are not giving; they are selling.

They want us all to be grateful to them forever.

They want us to owe them for allowing us to exist.

They want us to be on credit until they say we are paid up.

They want us to be grateful that they allow us to have our sustenance, shelter, safety, justice, freedom, and even our love.

There is no end to this mortgage of suffering.

I get fired up when I’m asked to be grateful for the air I breathe.

I get fired up when I’m asked to be grateful I’m allowed justice.

I get fired up when I’m asked to be grateful I’m allowed to live.

If you want me to be grateful, give me something I don’t have on my own.

Give me an equal opportunity to work.

Give me financial credit.

Give me the freedom of the vote.

Give me respect.

See me.

Peace

DFrey