Strangers

I’ve come to expect brutality and destruction in the world since the day Dad came to take me home from first grade, sobbing and inconsolable from another duck and cover drill. We’ve all practiced at WWIII since we were children. Inured to the up to the minute coverage and tears. War won’t break me.

What guts me is the beauty and beneficence of the human race as people tenderly care for each other. The breaking opens my wounds to healing and the essence of peace descends.

I’ll remember until I die the children of the world killed in a perpetrator’s march of narcissism and arrogance. Mourn with all who sacrificed their children to genocide. It’s easy to hate when I think of the children maimed who have to live with their memories. Enmity is the easy way.

It’s so much harder to allow the fracturing of our hearts to be used for a true and faithful purpose in the world, to join in compassion. To find hope for healing in the now constant diaspora of children to and fro across the planet. Children come to heal us with their sacrifice, now forever strangers in a strange land.

Is it possible the migration of the world’s children will save us from ourselves?

Sacrifice...

I meditated this morning to add my prayers and energy to pleas offered around the world to close the skies over Ukraine. NATO refuses in the fears of reprisal. Do they not understand if Ukraine falls, they will be next anyway? They are using Ukraine as their sacrificial lamb. 

Winter on Fire...

Winter on Fire. Free to all on You Tube. You have the right to choose what your children see, however, this film of hard truth is not for young children.

Welcome to a difficult conversation, the kind at home in the realm of artists, writers and all creatives, visionaries who continue at the forefront of great cultural shifts. A friend I admire told me this morning from the UK, I am an inconvenient woman in the world. There are legions of us. We are irrevocably bonded to a new way of being in our selves and the world. There is no longer a place to hide. Friends talk about moving to a better locale yet there is no place of peace to be found unless we look deep in our own souls. We will never find peace until we stand for the rights of all humans to have respect.

If you don’t think what rages in Ukraine matters, if you believe it won’t happen here ~ think back two years as you watch this film. Note each specific and terrifying similarity. We witnessed the same tactics here with Jackboots sent by a fascist wannabe dictator to prey in the same reprehensible way on defenseless protestors. Night after night. This is not remote. Note the formula of escalation by the terrorists when the demonstrations were peaceful with no weapons present. Shooting rubber bullets into an unarmed crowd. Destroying first aid stations. Beating persons who were helpless. Kidnapping people off the streets. Mercenaries went for the eyes in the protests here as well. In no way do I presume to diminish the sacrifices the people of Ukraine are making for us. I’m simply pointing out how easily this can occur in our country. Please don’t confuse the bully with the Russian people who are sick of him as well. His hurt pride and his grudge is the impetus for invasion.

Ukraine is a prototype for shifting the world from despotic violence to peace, while Ukrainian children pay the price for all of us. Stand with them for honor, respect for humanity. They model what living in peace and prosperity can be. The economic business model for most of the world is The Art of War. Were you aware? Sun Tzu in a suit. Conquer your enemy at all costs. Those who seek only power, meaning money, are threatened. Bullies are making a last stand, terrified they are becoming obsolete. Everything they stand for is obsolete.

Ukraine continues to lead the way into the new century, to a new way of being together in the world. A society born a mere 8 years ago offers compassion and humanity to a planet too long held captive and too long unchecked in the name of politics and economics. All bullies threaten, yet when they are challenged they are cowards at heart. I have a personal investment in Ukraine surviving and the Russian bully being brought to justice for war crimes. Alaska is one of the Russian territories mentioned in his take back plan. I would rather be destroyed than squirm under the boot of a tyrant. A dictator. A bully. I believe in peace and justice. The people of the Ukraine show us the way, personally and collectively.

Winter on Fire is now available to anyone to watch for free on YouTube.

Peace...

Sunflower. 2014. Oil and pastel. 24x36”

Creator and I had a go ‘round before dawn. Knockdowndragout, put up or shut up kind of dogfight. At least on my end. Calling out a Universe remaining stoically impartial. Some would say a temper tantrum to end them all if I were codependent and wanted the attention of Creator as Daddy who hands out praise or discipline.  

As it is, I’m a full partner so I have a say in my life creation. I stormed the citadel to command Management to Do Something! The Energy In Charge. The Creator of All Things. Source. The Infinite. The One who brings in the tides and raises the sun and lives in my cellular structure ~ in each of us as creations who go bumbling about our lives. 

Before you all cover your heads and deny you know me in the interest of self preservation, command is an understanding of my place in the universe. I have, as co-creator of my world, the right and privilege to take responsibility for my life. Command plants my feet squarely and states my requirements. The difference between actively and creativity involved or victim to a punishing god. 

I’m sickened as atrocity after barbaric, savage, unspeakable atrocity keeps occurring on this planet. Return love for hate? Turn the other cheek? What happened to the boy standing down the tank in Tiananmen Square? 

I’m not into my reward in Heaven. I’ll take a cease fire here and now thank you very much. How many martyrs to love is required before we receive our allotted measure of peace, contentment? 

My sacrifices don’t make the news. Neither do several billion other people’s. Yet we count. As a world body we count. And it’s time. All of the Whos in this orbiting rock of Whoville. Is it possible if we look up from our cellphones and come together, the Universe will resonate to our sincerity? Is it possible with whole hearted intention and attention we will accomplish? 

 “Sometimes what we want is wrapped up in what we don’t want.” Okay so it’s time to be incredibly clear about what we want. Finally.

How many wimpy prayers are wasted in the fear and trembling of considering all our options and covering our bases before we collectively march on heaven? As co-creators command this heinous disregard for the human soul stop. All of it. The vestiges we hide for That Neighbor. The darkened corners of our own soul.

How much will it take before we decide to live together in respect? I’m not even asking for love. I know very little about the practicalities of love, forgiveness and the higher laws of sainthood. Respect. The realization we each are enough in the world. The understanding there is enough and to spare for all if we share? 

Some say this is the most evil planet in any of the systems. The “prison planet” of the universes. If the Universe is impartial can we at least get to neutral as a human race? 

Here’s an invitation, Creator. Would it spoil some vast eternal plan to give us a break? Meet us halfway? A couple hundred years of peace, rest, renewal. A chance? 

I’m wasting energy in too many futilities I can’t control. I’ve meditated and prayed myself to dissociation and back. The only act left is to work with my hands. Let them touch. Begin to breathe and with the breath, my brain will know I’m still alive. Anxiety and fear reduce with the breath. The brain comes back on line and in the face of Dark Nights and Existential Crises I’ll know what only I can do to contribute.

Make time a friend...

If you know me at all, you know Earth Time is the biggest challenge I’ve faced.

Childhood was beloved cycles synchronized with animals coming to the river for water at dusk or morning heralded by loons calling from the lake. In summer, sneaking out during the white nights to run with rabbits. Eat when hungry ~ or forced to sit still long enough to endure what passed for occasional family dinners. Play was a foreign concept while running the woods was endlessly fascinating. Winter sledding down icy hills followed by torpor of hot chocolate. I can still smell when it will snow.

Then school. Civilization. For me, an analog clock was an artifact without a Rosetta Stone. Digital devices only marginally better because I still have to calculate time passages in my head.

I could handle the concepts of yesterday, today and tomorrow but this week, last week, next week are still a black hole, so I resolve them by dealing in dates not days. Left to my own devices longer than 24 hours, I’m hard pressed to tell you what day it is. Daylight savings time is a torment I have no desire to comprehend. Calendar holidays go unremarked while I take great joy in winter solstice to mark the season and return of the light. Death and birth are markers in the endless progression of ancestors and progeny. While I try to remember birthdays because they are important measurements for humans I often forget my own.

School felt like a permanent tooth ache. By contrast, pregnancy was easier with beautiful humans to show for the 9 months. Adulthood and being on time for gainful employment was an endless anxiety attack.

Technology created a separation between us and our natural body rhythms forcing an override 24/7 365 productivity at any cost. When I give attention to the clock, I get caught in the trap and external pressure of time. BTW, time doesn’t actually exist. There’s a reason every spiritual practice has a variation of sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.

On a prompting deeper than mere impulse, I purchased a clock with a face display of the days of the week. There are markers at noon and midnight. The rest is wild and beautiful guesswork. Magic happened. The days slowed down and accomplishments increased. I’m sleeping better. I have more energy and enthusiasm. I still make appointments without the pressure by setting a reminder alarm - thank you, smarter than me about time phone.

Megan Macedo said, “the way we measure things shapes our focus.” Our focus shapes who we become.

I have the luxury of creating my own schedule and I’m thankful. I started small by removing all the clocks in my creative space. What one thing could you do to create a space of luxury in your life? I vote throw the clocks away, at least in the studio or the place you journey into for creative work.

You're invited...

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