Brown, Tom - February 3, 1999

February 3, 1999

Dear Carl,

Ah, I agree with you entirely. When things are darkest, and resolution is farthest from my vision, I think back on things and feel out the bottom-most bottom line. No matter what, this life I have had the opportunity to live - both success and mistake - is of such quality and substance, that I am grateful, appreciative, and finally uplifted like the cream rising to float on the milk, like the hot air ballon rising in the dark, cold dawn.

Yes, this is the living book, the book that cannot be burned, cannot be turned back at the mailroom by some fascist castrati, cannot be lost to some careless borrower. And, finally, this is the book to which all respond for it is written in the very fabric of life, as our little patch is a part of the larger garment and cannot be denied.

And sometimes, the value and placement of the individual patch, comes to represent some fundamental value, some irreplaceable function, and so that patch is carefully placed in a prominent position so that all might appreciate it, even as the wearer appreciates it. And this is only my opinion, but I think that the Coptic patch is one of very fine utility, beauty, and instruction. I think it deserves, and we deserve, to have it prominently displayed. I think it instructs us all in ways that are particularly relevant right now.

We are arriving in an age of enlightenment. Witness the difference between High Times and Cannabis Culture. I do not seek to disparage anyone's efforts, but the comparison between 1% pasteurized commercial grade, and 100% organic Jersey health food store variety milk is a good measure of the difference. And the difference is prominent in that Cannabis Culture makes a prominent placement of the efforts we have made over the years to institutionalize the lessons of God Consciousness we have accomplished. Cannabis Culture takes our spiritual development seriously, and that effort is reflected in all other coverage. It is the spiritual accomplishment that leads us, and when it is low, our results will be low fat also.

I am particularly impressed that this work of recording and disseminating is being done by you. According to you, you are not the spiritual master, the leader, but a simple, fallen Soul. And your efforts are aimed at the simple, fallen soul. That's the way you see things. And since most of us are simple fallen souls, not the Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, John Lennon, Bob Dylan's of the world, ultimately the vision of the simple, fallen soul is most instructive.

The greatest obstacle to God Consciousness in our time, is the EVIL rendered to it by the archaic, arthritic, arthrosclerotic institutions of the past. For the most part they have abandoned the actual pursuit of knowing God in our lives and promote their own institutional existence. They no longer function as a heart or kidney, rendering useful service to the whole of our life. Instead they have become a cancer, seeking to dominate resources simply to grow of themselves. And this is no particular indictment of them, this is the way of life - to grow old and irrelevant unless carefully tended, disciplined, and nurtured on the mothers milk of inspiration present in the youth of the day.

And the particular value I see in this Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church lesson, is not the ultimate, rigid, rule that must be followed, but the irrepressible value of the lessons learned as fallible, humble people sought out God against all obstacles, and met the Master and failed to recognize Him in the glory of His resurrection, and the pain of their own perceived loss. Because, ultimately, it is not that we need to have the latest human incarnation come to Kingship over us. Ultimately we must rise to the occasion, denied since the Jews first came to grumble that they did not have a King like their neighbors. It is not for us to seek and acquire a King, but to become responsible of Kingship in our own lives. This is what God called the Jews to, what they rejected, what their struggle over the ages teaches us of the futility of trying to avoid that test, that lesson, that task of paying the price to try to come to our own Kingship in all the terrible cost that is implied by that. The cost avoided, the cost not paid, is the value not received. Better to try and fail to be King over our own lives, than to seek and acquire a thousand Kings for the generations who will continue to nurture the illusion that Bill Clinton, or George Bush, or Jack Kennedy is anything more then another version of us and if there is something in that person that attracts us, we had best be on the way to develop that vein in ourselves.

And so, is there a better example of these lessons than the EZCC? Is there a lack of the miraculous, a failure of inspiration, a denial of the divine, not enough of the gritty low life reality that is what we are about anyway? Not the way I'm reading the letters, there isn't, no lack at all.

And so, I see a very valuable lesson for all of us who are now coming to the front to lead the class in singing a hymn, in speaking a word of prayer, in offering a word of inspiration to uplift us all. I see good lessons, timely delivered, reaching out to instruct and enlighten us to achieve greater measures than were (or are ever) available at the time past when they occurred.

Thanks for clearing up my confusion over writer and reader of the letters. I recall your lesson of Carl Swanson, and how there may be a connection to the Pelican that knocked out the power in the courthouse upon Jim Tranmer's sentencing. Isn't this some of the miraculous that we need like air, in our lives, this precognition of Swansons'? I don't read that you think his death itself was the measure of the value of the Church's activities. I read that his death was a pointer, an indicator, a litmus test that illuminated the struggle - but did not determine it. Death in the hand of EVIL while engaged in the struggle to achieve enlightenment in God, is not loss. Jesus taught us that when He gave Himself over to the Mafia of the Temple for their final, culminating bloody sacrifice. But His death was the pointer, the indicator, the litmus test that lead us to understand that the limits of authority had been overstepped and that retreat from engagement on the Temple Mafia's terms was in order. And so the Jews have no bloody sacrifice to this day - though they would voice denial of the one who taught them the lesson.

Our lives are so much a mixture of our own mastery and our own vulnerability to our baser passions. You without sin cast the first stone says the Master. Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for they are not so full of themselves that they can't see the dawn. Was the Church in error, were some caught in a lust of the physical material plane and not a spiritual ecstasy of God? Probably! What is more typical of us humans than that? Did the Church's competition with the CIA bring tons of the spirit medicine to all of us - despite the failures in transmission? Probably. What is more typical of us humans than that? Were millions of us able to purify our spirit with the incense of ganja? Certainly!

Was it worth it that a man died? Well what was the alternative? Last time I looked, 100% of the people alive on the planet today will be dead in 150 years, without exception, regardless of race, religion, national origin or genetic imprint, all dead. So, that being the case, the test is not the fact of death - which is inevitable - but the occasion, the effect, the cause, the result, and the alternatives that were not realized. And who is to judge these things?

I take all input and process it. I try hard not to reject anything out of hand - without first tasting it. I know that I miss a few of my former life mates, who are now beyond the pale. My missing them causes me to examine the circumstances of their life and death. This leads to invaluable lessons on the importance of this and that. I take your evaluation of Carl's life and death with the authority of your proximity and familiarity to the events. I offer you a Balm of Gilead to soothe your hurt and loss. I hope that you be more than at a loss, with his life with you. I pray that his spirit will enable you to be one with him again despite the distance you now endure.

Thank you also for the article on Dark Alliance, by Gary Webb. I have the book and have studied it thoroughly. The article is a CIA plant by several lights. First of all, it was written by Glen Garvin for the Miami Herald. As we all know, Miami is the center of Cuban CIA drug operations for the past 40 years - if not before under Santo Traficante who inherited the operation from Lucky Luciano. It is Santo, Carlos Marchello, and Sam Giancanno of Chicago that Nixon recruits thru his agent Robert Mayhew to provide the team to kill Castro that became the Bay of Pigs operation. So this reporter is from ground zero of these operations, but he is trying to discredit them, not just the Contra operation, but the whole idea of CIA drug for guns operations. In addition he disparages the Christic Institute's lawsuit. In fact, while their pet federal judge did throw out the case two days before trial, that same judge had approved the discovery motions that proved the case prior to the trial. These were a long series of motions, all of which dovetailed onto each other. If one motion had not panned out, the next consecutive motion would not have been approved by the Judge but he did approve them. The report of the Christic Institute lawsuit evidence is crap - I know because I was part of that chain from the Arkansas end, and my evidence is not only corroborated by the 32 volumes of Mena, Arkansas, investigation files, but by almost ten different individuals I have met in prison who have particular knowledge as actual participants in these operations. But that is OK because in the end, the only bad publicity for this will be no publicity, and that article, though a bullshit disinformation piece, is quite extensive and well written enough that anyone reading it will get some good information despite the authors intentions. I note that several years ago you sent me an article (front page) from the same magazine - that had a 180 on the Mena operation - when it was being used to discredit Clinton thru a Senate Investigation that never got past accusations. I highly recommend the book Dark Alliance, it is a terrific read, you will not be able to put it down, and the bullshit of this article will become immediately apparent as you read the real thing.

I would not be surprised if Dr. Dreher's unavailability to you in the past has something to do with not wanting to be associated with the "drug" issue - as she studied the effects on the ground. As she says in the article, she has had a lot of trouble getting funding. Any association with you in the past would probably not be conducive to further funding of these controversial projects. It's so nice to be a leper in a lily-white society. You always know who and where you really are.

Jim Tranmer got really upset with me over the 'queer' issue. Robert sent me a letter from Jim to him that got into it pretty good on my likely origins and destinations. I felt real bad that he had that reaction. If there is an opportunity for him to know that I have a lot of respect for him and that I await his wanting to communicate, please let him know that. Robert was really upset over that too, and that is why he withdrew from communication - it was too painful for him in his own words. But I gotta go with what God is telling me, leading me to know, and I know that Jesus just wouldn't kill queers. He made them His Apostles, John - the one who laid his head on the breast of Jesus at the last supper and asked if it was he that would betray Him, and went with Him into the house of the chief priest where He was put to the trial; and Paul - the J.Edgar Hoover of the day (the closeted queen who attacked the other queer's out of fear of what would happen to him if he was ever found out).

But I do enjoy hearing the tales and history/herstory. By the way, where is the herstory? No women in the EZCC?

Take care. Enclosed also is an editorial piece from Ken Star's brother - another right wing zealot who has been battling Clinton for eons. And now he endorses medical pot - how nice.

Will wonders never cease?

One love.

Rev. Tom Brown 04808-010 P.O.Box 9000 Forrest City, Arkansas 72336