Like an army but the other thing.

A large group of people working together for a certain kind of goal. Many different skills used and taught.

Matching clothes--shall the non-army have them?

Call teenagers on the phone and say your fondest ideals--you can help make them real while you learn to do hard, interesting things.

The Gore-Tex Company trained people by having the wander around the company learning what was being done and thinking about what could be done, and then making part of that be there job.

This not-an-army-but-the-other-thing does that too. It will be hard because so many entering will be near teenagers and therefore near geniuses, near loud producers of banalites at the same time.

Cornell West in a lecture in Oakland told about how when integrated, racially integrated groups of students went out to do some project together, on the bus ride out, the all said nothing new. They talked about race and around race in ways they had done before and that many others had done before.

On the bus ride back they talked about what they had just done--intrinsically new to them because they had just done it.

Something in ancient Greek talks about how an army of lovers cannot be defeated, and gay people oft quote that, and I'm always going inside myself, "Does it have to be an army?"

The ancient Greeks were thinking of pairs of guys. The quote is also used with approval in the terrific lesbian novel "Patience and Sarah" by Isabel Miller. Those two women living on early nineteen century New England farms had never heard of lesbian love, didn't know anyone who thought sex in any form was fun and partly about profound bonding, and each of them had never been particularly supported on a deep soul level.

They lived in hard-working farm community where life was easier than it had been in frontier time and far from easy. It was all about work. When they blew up other away in a positive way as one delivered a load of wood to the household of the other, they found a whole new level of support. The sex love heart connection which wasn't happening in their neighborhood among anyone. It was all very functional--"slam, bam, thank you ma'am" without the thank you ma'am part.

So these two are quite surprised by the good feelings they can give each other and the river of deep support that flowed between them. I support you deeply because of the way you are you and how I feel that. Deep support is inevitable.

And when they are in that place, the one who has book learning, Patience, brings in this "army of lovers cannot be defeated" thing.

Does it have to be an army? A group of people, including many lovers, profoundly supporting each other from the luxury of support that arises from their love.

Part of the work of the not-army is to help make society so that there is more support flowing around for what you were born to be which may be something you've never seen in your neighborhood.

An army of lovers cannot be defeated. A not-army-but-the-other-thing can find new kinds of victory to work for, to live in, for more and more people. A world in which people can easily find out who they are because they feel really supported right at the heart and on out to the universe.