I had a moment the other day driving down the west side of the Rockies in Karen Hand and Dave Slaters car en route to southern Utah. This song came over XM, and Im there with my amazing wife and daughter, feeling totally f**king whole, and Im thinking about the last time I made it through there with my best friend twelve years ago, and thinking about everything thats happened since then (including the birth of my single favorite person of all time, the cultivation of my marriage with her beautiful mom and the deaths of her grandmothers, and the growth of the temple my teacher founded in Detroit almost a decade-and-a-half ago). And Im looking at all that land, remembering there was and will be life before and after 24 hour news cycles and Late Capitalism and Failed Communism and, really, all the -isms. And Im not into polemics, but I do think that each one of us should love with utter abandonment at least once a day as a practice, and remind ourselves that the present order of things is temporary and totally, completely arbitrary and often imaginary, and cultivate an utter defiance that asks which of our current decisions serves our childrens childrens children, to say nothing of we ourselves today. Sing. Love. Dance. Sit. Cry once in awhile, and be grateful that our teenagers -- annoying as they are -- keep us honest. Go hug a tree and sing at the top of your voice. For The Children The rising hills, the slopes, of statistics lie before us. the steep climb of everything, going up, up, as we all go down. In the next century or the one beyond that, they say, are valleys, pastures, we can meet there in peace if we make it. To climb these coming crests one word to you, to you and your children: stay together learn the flowers go light --Gary Snyder
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 07:22:59 +0000
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