April 8, 2020
Today’s
observation- Took another bike ride, headed back down to the river and west to Davenport. So not to repeat last year’s flood catastrophe,
the city has established a sturdy temporary flood wall and barricaded River Dr through
the downtown stretch. Rise you Mississippi, gravity your skin, we know you're pushing but you're not coming in, not by the hair of our chinny
chin chin. As I rounded the far side of
my loop to head back, a thunderstorm crawled up behind me and there was nothing
to do but push on through the wind and the thunder. I was pelted with pea sized hail and cold-water
pellets, a mini Part 2 of the night before.
I thought to myself, “Could this ride be even more dangerous than venturing
out while over sixty in this time of a coronavirus epidemic?’ Something inside me
beamed with reckless consent as I pedaled on pushing my luck. With rain dripping off my glasses and a satisfied
grin, I rode past other intrepid Iowans just singing, jogging, walking the dog
in the rain, albeit it acres apart.
Today’s
image – I knew it! The world has grown quieter
over the last month. National Geographic
documented the decibel decline in major cities around the world in a recent
article. I’m imagining that we could be
on track for finding our new groove that funnels us toward sustainable life on
the planet. Have people found a
replacement therapy that was once filled with retail shopping? How does cooking at home raise the happiness
index? “Soon, but not right now” is a
perfect newly paced affirmation or term for consent. How long does it take for contrived darkness
and unfounded fear to transfigure into light and love? Look outside, it happens every Spring. True this is a time of year blessed by living
in a temperate climate, a place with four seasons. And how assumptively we have slid into our temperate
climate cosmology and called it universal. Where even our mythology is seeded
in the geography north of the Tropic of Cancer, where sunlight slants with the
tilt of Earth. (I hope you notice how
well I am practicing my surrender of fixed perspective.) I’m asking, what seasons drive the cosmology
of kindred cultures elsewhere on the planet, those nested in maybe two seasons
or ten? Is darkness universally hallowed because it grants rest and restoration?
Is light the boogey man that drives us to exhaustion. Where does quiet live in
the equatorial places? What slows the
engines of desire in paradise?
Today’s
idea – I ranted yesterday about new age evangelists. Then today, one more floats up on his YouTube
channel, gift of another friendly recommendation. I capitulate and give him a
listen, thinking maybe it’s not the proselytizer but me the listener kinking the
message into something offensive. True, I
am a religious skeptic, so was my dad. Fruit falling right under the tree. My
veritas armor has been tempered in science.
I don’t believe I should just believe a charismatic philosopher; I can
come up with my own syllogisms. I understand that for many, they are a
comforting tonic in times of trouble or vexation, being inspired by muses of
ancient tradition. I appreciate that
inspiration, I do. But give me a
practice not a doctrine; even better give me poetry. I am surprised at this skeptic’s role,
considering myself a live and let live kind of gal. But I am prone to push back when the zealot herd
swells into the mainstream, touting a creed like it was an immutable law. Here is an assertion that has begun to push
my buttons: “Humans are being readied to ascend to 5D.” What the hell? As
someone firmly footed in the four dimensions – I am galled that such apostolic claims
expect the respect, unformed and unfounded, even as we have been yet unable to
render such to our 3D Eden, the natural world that supports us so
generously. (Hold on or not, I’m
relaunching this rant for another few sentences. Then hopefully it will transfigure into something
poetic.) Help me discern the difference between the blind faith allegiance of
Matt Kahn’s devotees (who want to manifest an escape hatch from a fire we started)
and that of a Pentecostal Megachurch in Texas (maybe there is none and it doesn’t
matter). Bliss comes in different flavors. So why am I as bothered when Matt
Kahn glibly affirms, we have arrived at the eve of a 5D ascension as when a Pentecostal
congregant believes she can mega-gather and not share Covid infection because she
is covered in Jesus’s blood. (Put me in
time out until I return to my kinder sensibility. Except I think time out is
what brought me here.) In the end, my
curiosity leads me by the hand to the video sermons of Kahn or Wilcock. “Here, sit,” it coaxes, “You know what to do:
empty your cup, go to beginner’s mind, crack the code, get beyond the words.”
If there is a paradigm shifter nested in the litanies of these 5D gurus, one
that inspires more humans to be kinder and more generous among the other
biosphere populations, I want to hear that story. But pray that they are not more crazy edifices
built in the name of revelation, that do little but stratify and divide
us. How about something that unifies? How
about a good poem? Antonio Machado
activates my spirit with lines like these:
Last night as I was sleeping
I dreamt – marvelous error! –
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart,
I said, along which secret aqueduct
Oh water, are you coming to me
Water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
I dreamt – marvelous error! –
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart,
I said, along which secret aqueduct
Oh water, are you coming to me
Water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt – marvelous error! -
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
I dreamt – marvelous error! -
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt – marvelous error! -
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
I dreamt – marvelous error! -
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night as I slept,
I dreamt – marvelous error! -
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.
I dreamt – marvelous error! -
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.
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