We live off the grid and our home is solar powered. Some who use solar power put their solar array on an automated tracking system so that the panels turn toward the sun on their own. I chose to manually turn our panels every day throughout the day. This daily act over the past eight years has brought me into a direct relationship with the Sun. Throughout the year I have the opportunity to see where on the horizon the Sun rises and sets and how high up above the horizon it moves.

Using and tending to our renewable energy system is part of my spiritual and religious practice. The practice of daily sun salutations, either yoga or resh, has been replaced by the daily ritual of turning the solar array. Equinoxes and Solstices become more important as we experience the changing affects that the different seasons bring with more power in the summer and less in the winter. By the time the Winter Solstice arrives we find ourselves longing for longer days and are filled with excitement as we watch our power increase with each day as the Sun rises earlier and sets later.

It is my belief that our society has simply stopped paying much, if any, attention to the Sun. We have forgotten all the beauty that surrounds us thanks to the Sun. All the sustenance we receive, the food we eat, the water we drink, the transmutation of solar energy that takes place within our own bodies, and let us not forget the warmth of the day. Most important the sun is critical to the photosynthesizing plants where in the plants transmute the carbon dioxide in the air into the oxygen we need to breath.

It seems as though that our days are so filled with the struggles of the mundane that we simply take for granted that the Sun will rise tomorrow. And it will! For now, thankfully, the one thing we can count on is that the Sun rise is a constant.

However, one of the lessons contained in the Arthurian myths is ‘that that which we stop paying attention to goes away’, like the Pagan Gods. Imagine for just a moment where we would all be if the Sun decided to go away. Its endless light and radiance simply stopped shining upon our beautiful Earth. Imagine, if you will, some catastrophic event that we humans have created that hides the Sun from us yet we know it is still there. Where would we all be without the Sun? Dead! No longer in existence!

In ancient times the people actually gave their attention to the Sun. Worshiped it even. They built temples that honored the changing of the seasons. Some very sensibly built their homes and communities in ways that the Sun would shine on them all day long keeping them warm even during the coldest of seasons. Some of humankind’s earliest technologies were solar powered clocks and calendars. Over time religions of the Sun became religions of the One God and his Son or prophets. We lost reverence for the God the Sun in our sky. Yet while spiritual and religious practice has lost its association with the sun, we still know and understand its power.

Scientists say that enough solar energy reaches the surface of the Earth in one day to provide all of us with enough power for a year. One year for one day for all the electricity we humans consume. This even includes the energy needed to produce the technology necessary to convert solar energy into electricity.

With the energy of the Sun, we can power our lights, our homes and even our cars. In the renewable energy industry there is a saying; “priority should always be given to the Sun“. This is more important today then ever before. With the ever increasing population and the endless consumption of natural resources the time has come for us as a species to turn full circle and look up once again towards the Sun.

Today’s Sun worshipers build and use the temples of technology that honor and worship the Sun. Such temples include solar photovoltaic panels, water heaters, thermal collectors and solar ovens. There is nothing tastier then a sweet potato cooked in a solar oven. A solar oven actually infuses the food with solar particals, otherwise known as photons or energy of light, that when eaten are transmuted into the Sun worshipers body.

It seems to me that we are all currently paying attention to the “wrong” things. We spend our days under artificial light. We cook our food using artificial heat and wave forms. We heat our homes and travel about by consuming non-renewable resources. We have even begun to grow our food using these artificial means. We talk environmentalism as a society but we put profitability and economics ahead of everything else.

Maybe I am being too harsh. Maybe it is not the “wrong” things we are paying attention to at all. But I definitely know what we are not paying attention to, and that is the things of the Sun.

Natural light, the warmth of the day, the taste of natural grown and solar cooked food, the feeling of Sun’s light on our skin as we walk through the grasses, trees and wild flowers. Nature and the stuff of nature are in a constant state of co-creation with the Sun for us to enjoy and participate in its endless beauty. And what we have forgotten most of all is that we are a part of this delicate balance, not apart from it.

As we participate in our daily lives let us all remember the new mantra given to us by today’s Neo-Sun Worshipers; “Priority should always be given to the Sun“. Let us remember that without this great and wonderful power we do not exist. Let us live our lives, daily, accepting and practicing this as truth.

It is time that we all bring our attention back to the Sun.

I grew up in a military household with an alcoholic father who was very angry and unhappy with his life. He was not physically abusive per say, but he was emotionally abusive. Fear was always the emotion of the day. Being a military family we moved about every three years or so. My Mom was a loving person but as a Catholic she was unable to consider divorce as an option. She was also afraid.

I couldn’t wait to leave home. My older brother left home six weeks before he was to finish high school; he had been using drugs and between his drug use and my dad’s alcohol abuse, life for him and everyone else at home had become unbearable.

I had been playing trombone in the school band and had found a certain type of refuge in playing music. Band had actually become my life and I planned for it to be my life. Towards the end of my junior year of high school my dad received transfer orders. This was an every three year process for us and for the most part I was used to it, but this time was the worst of all. I had been selected to perform first chair in the All Europe Band but we were scheduled to leave Germany two weeks before the concert. I had also been working as my band director’s aide having opportunities to conduct the band during concerts and performing with numerous choirs as well.

When I arrived at my new school here in the States the positions that I had held in the band in Germany were, needless to say, already taken. The frustration and anger that overtook me was unbearable. I blamed my dad for everything that was happening to me. I lost my musical refuge and life simply sucked. Life at home sucked and there was hardly any reason anymore to care about the music. By Thanksgiving of my senior year I attempted suicide, the following spring I ran away from home briefly. My brother talked me into going home again so I wouldn’t leave my mom alone with dad. Two days after graduation I was gone.

As far as I was concerned I had had a horrible childhood. I would tell people how bad I had it. Woundology was the language at hand. I was attracting people into my life that also had horrible stories to tell about their childhood. It was a time of “poor pitiful me”. The first few years of my adult life were filled with the struggle of trying to really be free of my dad. I went off to college and my band director there became my dad all over again. So I quit school and went to work and my bosses became my dad.

Didn’t I leave you at home? I could have sworn that I had left home and left dad there. But everywhere I went, there he was.

After a few years of running away from the voice in my head I actually started to listen to the stories of the wounded childhoods that my friends were telling me. I didn’t know what it was on that day that got me to realize that my childhood wasn’t anywhere near as horrible as most of the stories I had been hearing. When they would say to me after my story, “well you think that was bad…” my inner attitude started to change. Actually no, comparatively speaking it wasn’t that bad. Not at all. There are people I know who grew up in the darkest of darks.

I started to see that although my childhood wasn’t as full of light as some it was also not as full of dark as some. It was actually fairly gray. I started to see into the light side of my life little by little. I had a mother who showed me a form of caring love that is still with me today. I had the opportunity to travel around the world as a child and see things and places most Americans will never see. I was given an opportunity to spend time with people from other cultures and be influenced by their ways of life. Most importantly of all, my dad taught me what it was like to live in sadness. That lesson helped to lead me out of my personal darkness and to decide the one most important rule of my life today; no matter what always be happy and love what you do.

When I was about twenty I went back home for a visit. I came across my father staring out the living room window with tears in his eyes. He was crying. I had never seen my dad cry before. I went and stood next to him, asked him what was wrong. What he said to me that day brought all the work I had done to revise my childhood story to an ultimate climax. My dad looked me in the eye and said to me, and I quote, “I have not been a very good father, have I?” I was blown away. This man actually had emotion!

I had never been as proud of myself as I was on that day for how I responded to him. I could have taken that opportunity to unleash an unholy hell and fury upon him about how terrible he was, but I didn’t. If this had happened a few years earlier I am sure that I would have.

What I said to him instead was that, it was true, he had not been a very good father; but he had been an excellent provider. I reminded him that we never went hungry or had to wear second hand clothing or live in a place too small or without heat or cooling. My mother never had to work which gave us the opportunity to grow up with a stay at home mom. I also told my dad not to try to make up for it, to go on from here, that I was “ok” with the way things were and how they are right now.

I had never believed until that day that my father loved me. Now I have a different story that I tell of my childhood.

The facts you read at the beginning of this post were simply just that, facts. They were not the story.

The story is that I grew up in a house of love and opportunities. My parents and childhood have greatly influenced my life and I am truly glad to be the man I am today. I owe this all to them and the path of my childhood. It was actually really cool.

I find that people are attached to their suffering and are even willing to identify or define themselves by their negative moments. The retelling of my childhood has had a positive impact on my every day life. This story leaves room for me to be happy and positive in my adult life, and to remember and recount the good days of growing up. It also reminds me to find the light in every situation throughout my life, to give my attention to those aspect in order to maintain a greater leval of happiness and to attract into my life a more positive and uplifting relationship with the world around me.

On this day, one day before we inaugurate America’s first black President, we celebrate the life of one of our nation’s most influential individuals; Martin Luther King Jr. King was the chief spokesman of the nonviolent civil rights movement, which successfully protested racial discrimination. In 1963 King was named Man of the Year by Time magazine and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure. In 1964, at the age of 35, he was the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

One of the things that King is most remembered for is his famous “I Have a Dream” speech delivered on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during a march on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters, the speech is often considered to be one of the greatest and most inspirational in history.

Since I was born in October of 1963 I have grown up with that infamous phrase ringing in my ears, “I Have a Dream“. All through school teachers re-played King’s speech over and over again. Beloveds, how can we forget those beautiful words? Here are a few of my favorite parts, if you wish to view the entire speech in text or video, click here…

I Have A Dream Speech – Text, Audio and Video of Martin Luther

“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

On this day, that we remember this great man and his great works and deeds, I will take the time, and I ask each of you to do the same, to pause from you daily activities and create your own “I Have a Dream” speech. And then, live by it.If you would, please submit your “I Have a Dream” speech to the comments of this post.

So let us begin with MLK’s words “I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.“…