Krishnamurti said, "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." It is indeed sad, stressful, disgusting and terrifying that a 'crime boss' is ruling, at his whim, over the most powerful military & financial gang in the world. Many around the world must surely be amazed at the psycho-social-spiritual level of a nation that would not once, but twice elect such a leader.
“Worryin' is just prayin' backwards." David Chethlehe Paladin Fortunately, a proportion of us also intuitively understand that there is ultimately only one real force or form of energy, and that is love. Like darkness is the lack of light, fear is the lack of love.
There is an old Jewish legend that every generation has 36 saints (lamedvavnikim) on whose piety the fate of the world depends. By now, our world must surely have millions of awakening evolved human beings!
So when we witness consistently irrational, heartless, uncivilized behavior, it is best for us & everyone else to consider, 'What if this perpetrator were my only child? How would I want them to be treated?' Not beaten or murdered. We'd certainly want them to be arrested & securely restrained, and ideally, if at all possible, rehabilitated to become as functional as possible, & if possible, safely re-introduced into a decent, law-abiding society.
“If this world is to be healed through human efforts,
I am convinced it will be by ordinary people
whose love for life is even greater than their fear.”
Joanna Macy
Poetry, along with other arts, has the wonderful potential to connect us with our heart, right-hemisphere, body, the now, others, Nature and the Divine.
When she was a garden spider
Terry Ofner
and she hovered improbably above the patio
on that autumn morning, she caught me
with a filament across the brow.
Now, here comes the longest night.
People gather around solstice fires
as sparks drift into whatever comes next.
Angels, too, must have a ritual for this,
the moment of perfect imbalance
when the dark is collected in one place.
They must lean into it, their weightlessness
floating us through gravity’s fingers.
For me, I need a face. One I can recognize.
Take this photograph of my aunt Claudia
who died in childbirth years before I was born.
How do you know what’s no longer there?
Or take the field mouse that nibbled on a seed
under the feeder that late November evening.
A blink of owl-white and it was gone.
What we don’t know comes out of nowhere,
takes us up to the other side of doubt.
She’s gone, but traces of her remain.
A dun-shaded egg sac tucked in a corner
out of sight, full of now and hereafter.
Or light. Or wings.
Or that which floats or falls
when let go into our cousin night.
Winner of the Thomas Merton Grand Prize in the annual Poetry of the Sacred Contest www.centerforinterfaithrelations.org published by Parabola, Winter 2024-2025 www.parabola.org
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| Each individual's Loving Zest for Life is the Real Power |
