When upset, do not neglect to pause long & reflect deeply as you walk or bike about. Once, particularly, I recall being very upset in a public gathering, something to do with extreme emotional conflict -- and, instead of just quietly leaving and walking it off, I stayed & tried to verbalize my feelings -- as the workshop leader, in this instance, encouraged all of us to do. Look -- just take my word for it -- walk first, and far, then talk!

-Bill Joyner

This Old House, Sebrell, VA circa 1947

On rainy days, my brothers and I would create a play-world beneath this dear old, ramshackled place where we lived with our mother for six years or so. We had modeled from a deposit of grey, slate-like clay, discovered along-side the railroad, a whole city of quickly-hardened little buildings and vehicles. Situated amid roads and hills we made in the dirt beneath this quite highly-elevated house, these simply-sculptured objects gave us endless hours of fun.

The house didn't last long after we moved out. It was pretty much falling down when we lived there, actually. I went back there sometime in the early 1950s with Gertrude and as we made our way up a rickety stairway, we saw a scrawling message I had written on a wall years ago: "I love you, Mama. Billy."

Gertrude was a perfect mother! She surrounded us with ever-loving care and fed us immaculate biscuits, sometimes with brown onion gravy and fried potatoes. It was during World War II, and we were on welfare. With apologies for it's deteriorating condition, the landlord of this property rented it to us for $5.00 a month.

We helped her pick cotton and hoe crops for local farmers in the growing seasons, and in the winter we often would be found sitting around a wood-burning stove at night shelling seed peanuts. Mama would read to us at times, too. One book I remember most vividly -- THE UNDERGROUND RIVER. It was an adventure story, involving the main characters discovering and being lost in a vast, under-world river. It was so intriguing, so breath-taking!

- Bill Joyner

 

Pledge of Allegiance I Pledge Allegiance To The Earth For The Sake Of All It's Future Plant, Animal And Human Forms Of Life. One Living Planet Revealing God Wholly Loveable With Clean Air, Water And Soil Liberty And Justice For All.

 

TOO MANY CARS, NOT ENOUGH LOVE

It ill-behooves me to bad mouth cars right now, having just neglected the oil and water sufficiently to kill two of them in a row. Nevertheless, it does seem to be becoming, more & more, a situation of bumper-to-bumper traffic everywhere, with life- threatening events unrolling too fast to correct. Not only our own sanity & safety, but the very sustainability of viable existence for all future life on the planet is at issue. If we could simply learn to "love one another," there might be room enough for us all. Love creates a sense of leisure and a desire to be only where one is. Even one person alone can learn to be at peace with him or her self and not need to go anywhere. Love builds bridges of cooperation that require no steel girders for support. Love finds a way to get along, a way to share & expand available resources. Love IS the way -- the only way -- to save the world from ourselves. Leo Tolstoy's short story, HOW MUCH LAND DOES A MAN NEED?, answers it's own question in the parable of a guy who is given the chance to acquire all the property he can encompass by walking around it between sunup and sundown, but who dies of stress at the end of the day, because he wanted too much, and who, finally, needs only six feet of land in which to be buried.

- Bill Joyner

THE NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1998 

Perhaps it is not fidelity that we really believe in. What we really believe in, what we are committed to, is how disappointing we are to ourselves, and how we can use our ideals to humiliate ourselves and others. It seems as though our preferred state of mind is righteous indignation, and so our preferred political act is scape- goating. And in a democracy, scape- goating is always a failure of the political imagination.

-ADAM PHILLIPS

And now, a word about this letter -- am I being unreasonably apologetic for obvious presidential errors of the heart? Having been there more than once, I can safely and with all assurance proclaim, that, yes: (A) People do fall in love & sometimes do foolish and dangerous things both to themselves & others. (B) It is a far more serious commitment to stand together in spite of such transgressions, than to split up the whole family scene, affecting all with negative fall-out. (C) I do think that the persecution of the Clintons has all the markings of a classic witch hunt, and I do feel that it is a persecution initiated & maintained by right wing thugs like Jesse Helms. So There!

-Bill Joyner (10/08/98)

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