I sat in prison and had to accept the fact that I was a criminal, one who was living outside the law, an outlaw. I had to accept the fact that the Church was never going to be my home, ever again. I was, obviously, very depressed, somewhat paralyzed. It is simply ironic and darkly humorous to relate that I watched America’s top cop, President Richard Nixon’s Attorney General, John N. Mitchell, get indicted as I sat in the prison TV room. My felonious ears also heard Nixon say what everyone knew was his own indictment, “I am not a crook!” You might think that I felt some joy at all of this. Or that I laughed heartily. I did not. I simply went out and played lots and lots of basketball.As the Watergate Scandal impacted the attitude of parole boards towards war resisters, when I left prison in July of 1973 everyone was saying that the war was ending. There were no more significant anti-war rallies. Students and other activists were returning to other issues and pursuits. I, too, went elsewhere. Eventually my path took a turn into marriage and parenthood. I spent three decades in the corporate sector as a salesman and manager. Yet I was still lost and dwelling at The Bottom. I drank to excess. I lusted after Mammon. I tried to live a “normal” life as a youth league basketball coach, a Good Dad, a breadwinner, and, to a degree, I did. But a thought nagged me. “Why hadn’t I killed myself when in prison?” Why, when in the pit of darkness where I had no words or imagination with which to explain myself any longer, where I was deeply disturbed in mind and heart, why, then, had I not taken “Exit, stage right”?
What now was I living for? Certainly, my sons and my family. But I had stopped going to church, and the world was still endlessly warring. Moreover, I had worked in early Cable TV sales management and not only saw but passively assisted the ominous seeding of telecommunication’s pornographic worldwide growth through selling sex channel programs. What happened is something I can only explain as the Earthfolk explain themselves. I awakened. This happened when I first heard the call, “Mother.” Now here is where the story of sensual preciousness truly begins for me. I had just one word, “Mother,” but it made me feel, what I came to be, that is, sensually precious.“Mother” came to me in 1983. I wrote an article, “Prison, Bottoming Out, The Mother,” (published 1988) which ended, “At The Bottom, angels come to minister. The task ahead: to carve with a tongue unused to these alien categories, my sacrilegious words. God The Mother embracing God The Father made present through Child: each and everyone one of us ... each and all present, here at The Bottom, my family: Holy.” (See, "Articles" on this site.)
I had written this article in an effort to get a perspective on the question of why I had not killed myself while in prison. After all, I had lost everything—at least I had felt that I had lost everything. What remains, I pondered, when one Judge (Edward Devitt) thunders,
Worse than the average criminal.
Irrelevant and immaterial. Where to go from here?
As I thought about my life, 1945 and 1968 came to be
special years in my awakening. These were the years
when two iconic images arose within human consciousness—the
Atomic Bomb’s Mushroom
Cloud and the astronauts’ snapshot of Earth
from outer space, what is called, Earthrise (also, the Blue Marble or Spaceship/Starship
Earth). These were images which no human had ever imagined or seen. The Mushroom
Cloud actually awoke me—terrified!—on my first birthday (August
6, 1945) and deeply stirred the ancient Call that lots of people began to more
clearly hear in 1968 while gazing upon Mother Earth, namely, that the Earth
is alive—She is the Living Earth!
Here is where the Earthfolk come in. I realized when I had resisted the war that I had done so not as an American nor as a Catholic but as a member of something called “The Movement.” No one took time to strictly define what The Movement was. There were no membership ID cards. No entry fees. But in all the papers and through the TV reports the reference was to The Movement. Indeed, I was in prison because I was a member of this elusive, subversive, counter-cultural “something” which the government—and the Church—feared, this “Movement.”
When I heard “Mother,” I also sensed that I was part of something, but it was, again, as elusive as was The Movement. In the beginning, it didn’t make much difference to me what it was called. I became more aware as I awoke and then continued my awakening. I realized that what this “something” was called or named was irrelevant. What made us present, each to the other, was the insight and sensibility given through the core practice of “living as if I am no one’s Enemy”—which is what those in the Resistance were seeking to do. This is how people began to perceive that they were among others who were awakening. Somewhere, in a discussion or while dancing, at table sharing bread of mind and soul, sometimes in a moment of simply beholding the other, I’d feel the other make me present as “not an intimate enemy.”
This sense of not being an intimate enemy was especially strong among men who gathered in early “men’s groups.” There we talked about masculinity, sexuality, violence, etc. We lacked rich and robust images and languages but we felt differently—we actually respected one another! We were part of the “Men’s Movement”—whatever that actually was and is, but it helped us awaken to the type of hyper-military masculinity, to the Warrior’s Quest, that we rejected with great peril to our lives. (See, The Mankind Project)
As I continued to search, I saw that more and more people were parts of some Movement or Movements. The anti-war, the men’s, the feminist, the Green, the Native American, the gay, the Chicano, the animal liberation, the organic...movements. A pattern began to appear. These movements all valued the Earth. They were Earth-centered. Some even honored the Earth as Mother and as holy and precious. Everyone could hum John Lennon’s “Imagine”!As I reflected I saw certain common themes emerging from these movements. 1) They were anti-patriarchal and sought to discover or discern the presence of the Mother and the feminine. 2) They rejected the dominant world feeling of living in dread. Aaaggghhh! The Mushroom Cloud still sent chills through everyone, but folks just didn’t want to give in to being bummed out all the time. Even more than the breathless accounts of “Hippies on LSD!” the dominant culture was deep into numbing itself through stimulants and anti-depressants of all sorts. 3) We didn’t want to see one another as enemies. We rejected the Original Sin and “woman as temptress” idiocy of the Biblical tradition. 4) We did not believe that the world was going to be or had to be annihilated for any reason. In fact, and maybe this is a tad nutty but, it appeared that Mother Earth could take care of Herself, and that if the savage Warriors do start dropping atomic bombs then She will retaliate in Her own way. The Earth is ever-lasting, precious and holy. (For many, the then nascent "Gaia theory" was warmly welcomed.)
Over time, it seemed that increasing numbers of people began to agree that how we imagine life on the Living Earth is how life will eventually be. Ironically, for the militarize-the-Earth movement, the same two iconic images that inspired the Earthfolk awakening also heralded the triumph of the savage Warrior’s Quest vision and imagination. For them, seeing “Earthrise” meant, “We’ve won! We’ve conquered outer space!” They began to develop plans to wreath the Earth with numerous nuclear armed satellites.
All this said, I am going to say to you that you will never meet an Earthfolk, other than as you might have met someone in the Movement. That is, that it is through a ritual action that the Earthfolk are present to you and one another. Just as it was through the ritual action of protesting that you “became” and “met” Movement people, so you make yourself present as an Earthfolk when you couple in respectful intimacy. This core Earthfolk action and experience is like my favorite image of two candle flames merging to form one—burst into a soaring flame!—then passing apart to be singular again. It is the merged moment of Oneness that describes the Earthfolk awakening.
You can also look at being an Earthfolk as like what you experience when you are “online” while surfing the Internet. There you are in cyberspace—whatever that means! You are in your room, at your computer (“offline”) while simultaneously online, linked to millions of others, but then you can go offline, again. You could say that being an Earthfolk is being online while living in an offline world.
As stated, more info about the Minnesota 8, our trials, my writings, etc., can be found at http://www.minnesota8.net and at http://www.earthfolk.net Also, http://www.outlaw-visions.netPeace,
Francis X. Kroncke, 8867-147 [2009, edited 2012]