Have we lost the war on our Food?

Have we lost that last little battle?

This is a prayer to Saint Judas, the patron of lost causes. That there can be a final and unbelievable turning of something deep inside each and everyone of us that enables us to see the way through this together.

The framework is in place now in the United States to regulate the use of GMO crops in all farms on US soil that sell to larger markets or make more than $500,000 a year.

While our brave friends in Vermont focus on the labeling issue, that issue is only important in so far that it enforces a presupposition: that we are owed the right to know and control what is in our food.

That presupposition was unmasked in 2010 beneath our very eyes with the Senate Bill S 510 Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 around the same time that former Monsanto Executive Michael R. Taylor, J.D., was appointed Deputy Commissioner for Foods of the FDA by Obama. The latest Monsanto Protection Act (a last minute rider on the Agricultural Appropriations Bill for 2013, seals the lid.

Put succinctly in this article by RT.com:

• "The US House of Representatives quietly passed a last-minute addition to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill for 2013 last week - including a provision protecting genetically modified seeds from litigation in the face of health risks.
• The rider, which is officially known as the Farmer Assurance Provision, has been derided by opponents of biotech lobbying as the “Monsanto Protection Act,” as it would strip federal courts of the authority to immediately halt the planting and sale of genetically modified (GMO) seed crop regardless of any consumer health concerns.
• The provision, also decried as a “biotech rider,” should have gone through the Agricultural or Judiciary Committees for review. Instead, no hearings were held, and the piece was evidently unknown to most Democrats (who hold the majority in the Senate) prior to its approval as part of HR 993, the short-term funding bill that was approved to avoid a federal government shutdown.
• Senator John Tester (D-MT) proved to be the lone dissenter to the so-called Monsanto Protection Act, though his proposed amendment to strip the rider from the bill was never put to a vote."

We are loosing the war on the sanctity of our bodies, and our right to put what we want in them.

It is a war that none of us can afford to loose.

We are one national emergency away from Monsanto regulating what seeds, pesticides, and chemicals food producers can use, and that national emergency is inevitable: we are loosing our bees, we are about to loose our bats. Once a modified genetic variant gets out into a population of organisms, the integrity of that organism is forever compromised. Forever sullied.

And now Monsanto has decreed itself unaccountable to the courts and to the legal system should something go awry.

I wonder is it liable to Mexico once the seeds spread?

I wonder, knowing TEPCO to be on the verge of financial collapse, I wonder what happens when we realize the extent of the contamination, mostly in the waters of the north and south Western Americas. Who will we sue once the cancer begins to show a trend and a signature to Fukushima? Surely no one's pockets are that big.

This is assuming that it is possible to compensate for certain forms of violence.

Surely we will all loose from this patch of bad decision making equally. And although there is nothing it seems like we can do, we are all accomplices if we do nothing: our consent is in our complaisance.

Not to mention North Korea and it's sad witness to the effects of angry father syndrome, the oil spills, the eyeless shrimp, the radioactive tuna, the GMO corn liver cancer. We are testing the boundaries of nature: we are testing the depths of our own grief.

WE, the lucky we, are at that great darkening that we all know in our heart is true and have been expecting: the apocalyptic hurdles our species is supposed to figure our way across.

We, the lucky we, are all front row to see a living infrastructure that has been getting laid out brick by brick by the galaxy as well as by the people we have given our power to. We are seeing it come alive in a way that we never imagined it would.

Many of us will feel these waves like a snap. Like we have all been unilaterally and simultaneously broken. We must remember when that happens, that we are eternal.

We must remember that this part of our journey is dwarfed by the scope of what we have already experienced: in the broader sense of our eternal souls. We have been, we are currently, and we will be, in for the ride of our lives. Every single one of us. We must remember to be generous and kind.

Our bodies and minds are machines advanced beyond our comprehension. We are about to learn how to use them to a greater and magnificent capacity. Together, and beyond the shackles that we have placed on ourselves and on one another, we are learning how to connect in a way that does not break our spirits or dignities. We are learning to share ourselves in a way that does not ask from us anything that we would not willingly give.

You might ask yourself, for example, why you are reading this now. You may be reading this because you know that what I am saying is true, and you wanted to manifest that truth in your larger experience at this point in time. This writing, in a very real sense, could more than likely be a manifestation your own self waking your ass up.

Wake up, sweet dreamer. Wake up.

The time is now to be awake, to notice, to live as fully as we are able in circumstances that are beyond our ability to comprehend in the moment.

We must learn to lead our bodies and our minds with our spirits.

We must learn to love the people we are surrounded by, even in the face of that seeming impossible from moment to moment. We must learn to trust that goodness creates goodness - and give and create that goodness - before any expectation of return in kind (forgiveness).

We must remember that we are eternal.

That we exist. That we will always exist. That the most productive thing to concern oneself with are challenges worthy of attention: in the scope of this consciousness and the consciousness beyond this one.

Are we filling our lives with worthy initiatives?

Are we asking ourselves important questions?

Are we aware of the gift of being sentient and conscious and embodied as often as our sleepy minds can muster?

Are we forgiving to our own embattled hearts when that awareness is difficult to access?

Even in the face of Fukushima, and occupations, and exploitation, and the crashing money bubbles and the devastation of our food and our planet and our homes, are we still taking time to be thankful? Even though we might be all collectively be feeling hungry or lonely or unappreciated or angry, can we choose to reach for the initiative to appreciate our place in the grandness of whatever we are experiencing together in this time and place?

We might have lost the war on food for now, but the war on our consciousness is still ours to win. Our ability to join the forces of our collective spirit and will. We must learn to steer it.

There is nothing to do.

There is only awareness, in whatever moments we can steel it and as often as we can muster it. the power of directing our own awareness towards the beloved and worthy imaginings of what we want to create for ourselves and for one another.