March 23, 2020 - Happy Birthday John!
Today’s idea - what if
humans were plants? A body of absorbing cells, practicing osmosis to define its
posture and constitution. Wait! Humans are all this too, these ways of living that were passed on to us from our phototropic progenitors, we are
kin with those woody sages peopling the Earth with us. Do
plants feel fear like us? Do they receive dispatches that make them anxious and tucked
in? We wake to floods of fearful news. We want to shrivel up like scared hedgehogs as a way to
shield ourselves. Meanwhile, even in a storm of ping pong ball size hail, trees
keep themselves open to receive light, drawing in seasonally instead of episodically.
It seems to me that now is the most important time to stand fortified, strong. We have what we need, we built our homes from the bounty of our place. Our volition shows up now as privilege. With all the things we have taken as if they were just given, surely we can
employ their attributes now to carry us through these fraught days. What
are we made of anyway? Rain forests, mountain tops, vulnerable species turned into commodities, clean
water and air, miles of topsoil, coral reefs, wetlands, permafrost, glaciers,
fossil fuels and rare earth elements. Here has been the fuel and power of a high time civilization. Did we take for granted the convenience of open-hearted living
when everything is easy. Can we continue with the bon mots when danger seems out of control. Keep on
the sunny side of life. Good idea. Find the silver lining. Appropriate. Keep
our chins up. And our fingers off our faces. Here now the evolutionary
springboard presses under our toes? How will we launch?
Today’s image - Imagine a
generous world? What colors predominate? How does it sound? What is its
perfume? Its fingerprint? How does it grow stronger? Kinder? Smarter?
Resilient? How does its benevolence connect us with the grand network of
being? How does it teach us gratitude? Patience? How does it feed our hearts?
Grow into humility? What can we become when we recognize that we are a piece of
this generous world?
Today’s observation - I am
learning to be a warrior of pathogen invaders. Great protectress of the
ones that I love. We fight an invisible foe that is found only by its tracks
and residue. This poses a strange imperative of challenges. If I approach
day to day threats and avenues for invasion with a attentive curiosity like I
would a jigsaw puzzle or a tangle of necklace chains, looking for the patterns
and the root of the knots, I can abandon more distracting emotions and dwell
among the avenues of solutions for thwarting pernicious worry another day. To
make a hub of the simple ways to deter the virus: washing hands with soap and
hot water, paying attention to what we touch, maintaining safe social
corridors, and to recognize, even admire the stealthy and inconspicuous ways
infection spreads, from junk mail just delivered to finger nail to nostril
where it incubates and replicates with impunity. Would that we could encyst
ourselves, in times like these, like the deer tick during exceptionally cold
winters. We'd wait this pandemic out, then uncoil from our thick-skinned hidey
hole back into the safe and easy. I hope we can empower the best in one another
like the trees do. Be a keystone species. Show our kids this
is what we will be remembered for.
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