I remember clearly the night I spent up crying after finishing a book entitled Silent Spring…and the sunrise beginning of a lifetime committed to the environmental and social justice movements. As a student at Kent State I helped organize the first Earth Day celebrations and was the founding Chairman of Citizens for Survival, a local group in NE Ohio that exposed the game that industry was playing with our future. The early movement was all about shocking information…not hard to come by with the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland on fire and poison water flowing into Lake Erie from the small town I called home. That was 44 years ago, and even tho things appear to have improved in terms of those times we are now threatened with constant revelations that have for some moved this whole discussion into a different realm. I have over time moved from those shock and awe daze to the living the best alternative possible in as much love and peace I can muster days accepting that we have already moved far beyond the point of no return. The paradox is…I have never been so grateful and quiet before…taking note and being joyful for the smallest things that so often were left for granted. When I see my granddaughters I assume this will be the last time I ever do…and I try to feel like a returning soldier when and if I ever see them again, relishing every nuance…watching their face for the innocent grace and being grateful that I have been given this chance to be here now once more with this great miracle…knowing this place inside…a personal private chapel that has experienced so much loss…so much wasted….so much assumed…. Now, as I plot to ditch my truck and realize my trusted weed-whip must also be laid to rest along with ultimately everything that creates an internal inconsistency…I am more alive and more willing to open to the darkest and most frightening sobering and surrealistic truth without being hopeless or depressed. What becomes apparent is that we are in the midst of a spiritual transformation that brings each of us to the altar of truth and falsehood in the church of our lives. As a shaman teacher reminds me, Either kneel in respect on the living earth or be knocked to your knees by the forces of your loving heart…either way you are coming home…. Home..rather than a place…is where the heart lives…..
Posted on: Wed, 18 Jun 2014 15:21:45 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015