Mahatma Gandhi. Artist unknown.
I am the proverbial tree who has fallen in the woods, no witness, unbowed. So at the risk of being declared insane, naïve, idiot, dumbass, etc., I fall once again and scream into an ether of desperation -- LOVE.
Now I understand fully that that word fell into disrepute long ago. No respect for the unloved. No thought of those who aspire to love, but once you get there, once you awaken from the horror of sleeping wrapped in a fabric of loathing, you are noticed. And sometimes you are murdered. Your very existence is unbearable in a sea of pestilence.
Gandhi, Martin Luther King and the King of Kings.
I'm not speaking of one's love for one's partner or child, although I think that first moment with your infant approaches the state of being that I wish to communicate. And loving each other can never be devalued. But that feeling often vanishes into a veil. I speak of love as enlightenment. When after you have struggled through eons of lifetime after lifetime (if you believe in such things) of getting it wrong, getting it right, suffering, ecstasy, in other words being ALIVE, being human, all that you think you are dances with the wind, leaving you firmly rooted in earth. I speak to those who have journeyed through the entire human experience, sometimes quickly, often slowly.
Me, I am a special needs student. A slow learner. But I do learn and I am friendly enough.
So, why do I find it necessary to scream when the power of being in the throes of unconditional love speaks volumes without a single word, no unique utterance? Because I am unenlightened. Because once in a while I have been given gifts to glimpse into what has been referred to since time immemorial, the Promised Land. And because when immersed in an ocean of suffering that we cannot prevent from permeating our conscious quotidian lives, we must scream. Screaming is the music of the day. The screams of those killed by missiles, screams of those enslaved by sadism, screams of all keys, dissonant chords, never disappearing, echoing throughout human time. Screams haunt our waking hours, sleeping time, for those who have the luxury to be able to sleep.
In this country we speak of wars "out there." Somewhere else. Talking heads babble in our media, untouched by their subject. We are shocked, horrified, at the brink of compassion, but here in the U.S.A. we feel somewhat safe as war hasn't truly hit our shores since that great experiment in bloodletting -- the civil war. Yes, we've been victimized by acts of terror. But those acts, as heinous as they are, do go away and we do move on. Imagine Syria, eastern Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Iraq, just a few places where the dissonant chords of suffering and dying penetrate one's heart every moment of every day. Imagine how this must be. Then, please stop if you don't have to continue in this vein, for soon you will be paralyzed with hopelessness. Your fear would have transmuted into an iceberg.
I am one of the fortunate ones. I have never been to war or singed with its insanity. When I see my government voluntarily send our citizens into battle without truth, on rationales that obviously lie to our faces, I want to raise my scream to the biosphere. And it is not a scream of love. When I see those who have been dispensed into the pit of hell return home practically destroyed, I am desperate for ways to help heal these profound wounds. So, I go back to screaming LOVE. Always screaming one way or the other. That seems to be the order of the day.
The forest is petrified. We who still breathe, feel, able to sway in the sun as majestically as a willow, are responsible. We need to find a way to soften the concrete that has encased human consciousness. It is insane to think one human being can effect an impossible transformation. But I have this understanding of life. I really do see us all made of the same stuff. We share DNA. The geometry of our DNA is our sacred music. It is the music of creation. And if we start to contribute the harmony of our true north, our hearts, our soul, to the mix of our collective humanity, perhaps one day a moment of time a moment of space will reveal to us all the power of unconditional love; the precious gift of life. That instant will reverberate throughout eternity, dissolving our deepest traumas, our fear and finally our hatred. So, yes, I suppose I am insane.