My Dear Friend,

I see now why the pilgrimage across time to view The Ancients is required before we can pledge our lives to the ShaBeLu .  I cannot express how the horrors we read in our historical records have in no way captured the true essence of The Ancients’ experience.  I have come to see how authors are wont to spin their tales of beauty and woe, heartbreak and terror -- but they use words to sway the reader, to capture their minds with fear or anger, and finally to bend the will of the Reader.  Poets, oh my dear poets, how tragically unchanged they have remained.  The pain witnessed all around them, the hope that guides man, woman and child forward, drenches their tablets as they feverishly capture the mood of their Time.  It is from these great literary Ancients that we are able to gauge our own progression. 

You may recall during our conversation in LaVarula, I spoke of my intense curiosity for the changing times of the late 16^th Century.  It was here that we begin to see the emerging of The Two Balances – as we’ve come to know them – from North America. 

It was the recovered writings from The Ancients’ 21^st Century: The Connection in which I read the esteemed words of Caitlin Burns.  A most passionate observer of her day, she so eloquently states, “The perspectives presented to us through the works of writers such as Winthrop, Bradford and Williams are far from Pilgrim folklore, they are rather, the first chapters in a history of missionary bloodshed that has stretched for far too many volumes.  From the words and works of these men we must take with us the knowledge that sadly does not yet resonate through the 21^st century, that because a people look, pray or speak differently from us should not lead us to assume their ignorance but instead the intelligence that we may gain from them . Either this, or we are doomed to repeat the past” (Burns, “Or we shall be doomed to repeat”).  It was the conviction in Burns’ words that would eventually lead me to William Bradford and my BeLa studies.  That she so strongly believed in these three men as The Beginning – through records we now know it had roots much deeper than the majority at that time believed – captivated me and now I find, my dear friend, that it must have been quite perplexing to be Of Her Time.  To see The Before and recognize it for the lessons that our ancestors needed to learn and yet not have it be so… I feel I would have bandelied the noroglian if it had been me.

The words of Bradford have long plagued me.  Celebrated as one of the “Pilgrims much-loved "spiritual ancestors of all Americans"” (www.pilgrimhall.org/bradjour), we have the privilege of perspective that allows us to see how his lineage spreads up through the centuries of North America and eventually grows into an expression called the Tea Party.  I don’t have to tell you what becomes of that movement, we all know its tragic outcome… though we give thanks, for without it we never could have evolved into the graceful and gentle nation we are today. 

I digress.  We only need to review a few simple passages in Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation to see that the denial of the true spiritual self was so complete in the late 16^th Century that even one of their acclaimed “leaders” did not recognize his own hypocrisy.  Bradford states of the planned travels to North America, "Lastly, (and which was not least,) a great hope & inward zeall … for ye propagating & advancing ye gospell of ye kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of ye world” (Bradford 24).  But says this of the inhabitants of the new land to which they are traveling, “The place they had thoughts on was some of those vast & unpeopled countries of America, which are frutfull & fitt for habitation, being devoyd of all civill inhabitants, wher ther are only salvage & brutish men, which range up and downe, litle otherwise then ye wild beasts of the same"  (Bradford 24). 

Without knowing his new land, or the people which currently occupy said land, Bradford has condemned his future neighbors as savages, The Enemy.  Already his opinion is formed, and so is that of his Reader, for certainly such a pious and devote Christian would know best where the devil lays.  Bradford reinforces his undeclared religious war upon the Indians by stating at the end of a confrontation in which the pilgrims were victorious, “Thus it pleased God to vanquish their enimies, and give them deliverance; and by his spetiall providence so to dispose that not any one of them were either hurte, or hitt, though their arrows came close by them, & on every side them, and sundry of their coats, which hunge up in ye barricado, were shot throw & throw. Aterwards they gave God sollamne thanks & praise for their deliverance “(Bradford 85).

We see these same behaviors and sentiments repeat throughout the infantile stages of North American history as their God was used to justify many violent actions upon other civilizations, countries and even upon their own people.  So it should have been anticipated that with the introduction of the Tea Party –which we know now to have been corrupted by the Christian Supremacy, funded and operated by the most wealthy amongst the populace - the increase in religious fervor and an undeclared religious war on all non-Christian citizens within their own borders, that events would come to pass as they did. 

We see these parallels I speak of in our historical record VondaBlahli.  I urge you to read the section containing quotes from the early 21^st Century.  For now, let me share with you a few I have remembered from my own readings.  From Jerry Falwell, an evangelical fundamentalist Baptist pastor (wikipedia.com), "You've got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops. And I'm for the president to chase them all over the world. If it takes 10 years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord" (http://politicalhumor.about.com).  Or, the quote that shows that even after five centuries, certain North Americans hadn’t even begun to learn their spiritual purpose – the irony of this contradictive behavior is the subject of many of our own core theological studies.  I’m sure you know I’m referring to Stephen Broden’s suggestion at overthrowing the government if Republicans did not win in the 2012 elections.  He stated, "Our nation was founded on violence. The option is on the table. I don't think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms” (Kurtzman, HuffingtonPost.com).

Naturally we know the outcome to this bold statement.  However, it is because of the words and examples of The Over Balance that we have grown into the people we are today.  You know, as well as I my dear friend, how important this Age of Enlightenment was to our own personal lives so many centuries later.

It is the great words of poet Philip Freneau in “Poems Written and Published During the American Revolutionary War Volume II” that hangs on my study wall at home.  I’m sure you know the words by now as well as I, “Roused by the Reason of his manly page, / Once more shall Paine a listening world engage : / From Reason's source, a bold reform he brings, / In raising up mankind, he pulls down kings, / Who, source of discord, patrons of all wrong, / On blood and murder have been fed too long”(LL 11-16).   I think Alex Larsson summed Freneau up best when he said of this poem, “It is apparent that Freneau is a supporter of the Enlightenment thought. Throughout the poem, he commends Thomas Paine's ideas of universal benevolence and certainly views particular social institutions as outdated,” Alex continues, “It's evident that he wants that old system to end by suggesting monarchy is unfair and cruel. It's almost inhumane” (Larsson, “Freneau Fights for Freedom”).  Once again we know from our own historical perspective just how accurate Larsson was.  Freneau joined men like Paine, Franklin, and Wheatly at engaging the people around them to think critically about the direction their society was taking.  They wanted to live as a free people, wishing to stop their harassment by an absent yet tyrannical King (Paine 170).

It is Paine’s The Age of Reason: Part One in which he states, “I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy” (Paine Chapter I).  After the Great War, we know that many of the Deist beliefs shaped by Paine and others began to fall away, but this simple phrase from Paine has remained.  For in this one sentence he encompassed all that is good within whom we are as a people; and he knows the treatment we are capable of giving one another if we allow ourselves the choice.  It is in these wise words that, after the Great War, society was rebuilt. 

By now you can probably see how we were able to trace the Puritan and Pilgrim beliefs through history and lead into what would become known as The Under Balance.  We also see the men of The Age of Enlightenment engage, mold and begin a movement that would come to be known as The Cohesive – a movement that ultimately sought balance in all things, what we know today as the study of ShaBeLu or the study of “All human law deriving from natural law; when human law departed from natural law, disaster follows” (Hooker).  You know it by its common name, The Over Balance.  It is The Two Balances that keeps us stable in our society today, for we must always be mindful of where we came from.  It was George Santayana who said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (http://answers.google.com/answers).  The Ancients proved that to be true.

It has been quite the experience, my friend.  One I am happy to have taken, yet profoundly saddened by.  I am perplexed why it took The Ancients so long to learn from their history, yet when we view the same history we have been able to maintain peace for nearly 10 centuries.  What was it within the spiritual makeup of The Under Balance that allowed the populace to embrace a God willing to let them discard their own spiritual laws and teachings at will?  What was it about The Over Balance that allowed them to remove God from their laws yet exemplify what the treatment of fairness and equality for all really meant; ultimately becoming a spiritually powerful group as they began to look within themselves for guidance.  It all gives me a wonderful throb in the front of my head.

I dare say that the pilgrimage has renewed me and I cannot wait to discuss at length all that I have witnessed.  Until then my friend, be well.

Pax

Senior Council to the High Chief

Gross Inquisitor-Elect

Vibrational Keep Equalizoressence

Friend